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VALUES OF 
CATHOLIC FAITH 








VALUES OF 
CATHOLIC FAITH 


Bh we 


THE REV. LATTA GRISWOLD, M.A. 


MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
MILWAUKEE, WIS. 


COPYRIGHT BY 
MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
1926 


“Coelestis urbs Jerusalem, 
Beata pacis visio 
Quae celsa de revertibus 
Saxis ad astra tolleris, 
Sponsaeque ritu cingeris 
Mille Angelorum millibus.” 





CONTENTS 


. INTRODUCTION . 

. THe Mass . 

. [THE CREED . 

. [THE DIVINE OFFICE 

. THE KINGDOM oF Gop . 
. THE Way 








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INTRODUCTION 
l. 


IT Is IMPOSSIBLE in this age to take an in- 
telligent interest in what goes on in the world 
without being increasingly aware of the forces 
that are making for disintegration, and with- 
out becoming discouraged as to the surety of 
reconstructive influences effectively stabilizing 
western civilization and perpetuating western 
culture. In whatever direction the enquiring 
mind turns itself it is bewildered by chaotic con- 
ditions or confronted by insoluble difficulties. 

Politically and economically civilization is 
threatened with catastrophe. Morals, in theory 
as well as practice, are characterized by the 
repudiation of even the nominal standards that 
were accepted before the war. Philosophy for 
the time is inarticulate; and if art is not less 
vocal than of yore, that is matter for reproach 
rather than gratulation. It is true that science 
daily extends the domain of the known, but the 


2 Values of Catholic Fatth 


devices which the new knowledge makes possi- 
ble tend to complicate existence and to increase 
its stress and strain. The religious world, to 
speak only of Christendom, presents a confus- 
ing spectacle of hopeless division. It is char- 
acterized by almost every possible variety of 
belief and by general indifference to the prac- 
tice that any sort of belief might be supposed to 
imply. 

But the malady of the age is the subject for 
diagnosis by innumerable physicians, and it is 
the theme of almost all who write, unless it be 
that they prefer to illustrate rather than de- 
scribe some aspect of the general ill. Lacking as 
it does both novelty and usefulness, such pro- — 
cedure is no longer attractive; and yet it is 
desirable to indicate that the universal sickness 
may be ignored for the sake of demonstrating 
that for a few at least there is a way toward 
serenity of spirit and a method of escape from 
this too-much-with-us world. 

Apologetic no longer reaches those whom it 
would persuade, nor would prove convincing 
if it did. Authoritative instruction is accepted 
only by those who do not need it. In conse- 
quence neither reasoned argument nor dog- 
matic statement repays the effort to produce it. 
Yet it may be worth while to express, as clearly 


Introduction 3 


as may be and in quite personal terms, what 
this way can mean: what marks it through the 
waste and wilderness; what is the experience of 
walking in it, at least for one if not for all; 
how, even when but fitfully followed, it yet 
may gleam through the twilight of our dark- 
ened days with supernal beauty; why, in spite 
of its own difficulty or the pilgrim’s loitering, 
it continually allures. It must be possible to ex- 
press suggestively, if not adequately, in spite of 
intelligent awareness of insoluble problems, 
_why the Catholic Church may permeate all con- 
sciousness with its beliefs, implications, hopes, 
ideals; inform if not compel conscience; 
illumine imagination; satisfy intellect and feel- 
ing; and convince the spirit that its communion 
is in brief, as its first followers were content 
to call it, the Way. 

It is one of the most regrettable conse- 
quences of a divided Christendom that the 
Catholic Church may connote for different per- 
sons entirely different conceptions. Almost all 
Christians confess belief in the Catholic 
Church when they recite the ancient creeds, but 
it is common knowledge that they may mean by 
that confession anything from the vaguest and 
most indecisive notion of the Church to the 
strictest and most rigid. The expression may be 


4. Values of Catholic Faith 


used to profess faith in a general church in- 
visible or to denominate the most highly or- 
ganized and strictly disciplined of the Christian 
communions or even to indicate a nebulous dis- 
belief in any church at all. 

And yet precise definition of the term must 
be passed over; for that no ideas concerning 
the Church, even the most vague, are wholly 
alien to it, and since the very purpose of what 
is set down here is to illustrate and enlarge the 
conception. It must be sufficient for the moment 
to note that the term Catholic is here used in 
its historic sense of universal, that is to say, as 
standing for the absolute and the true religion; 
in the sense in which it is accepted, so far in 
common, by several large and well-defined 
groups of Christians: and to caution that, 
though no effort will be made to identify the 
Church with any one of these groups, it is 
not to be inferred that the Church militant 
here in earth exists independently of them. 
There is no escape from Rome, Canterbury, or 
Constantinople into an ideal Catholicism. It is 
only possible to pass from one of them into 
another, or quite out of the Catholic pale into 
churches which take pride in regarding them- 
selves as free of all historic boundaries and 
limitations. 


Introduction 5 


Content for the present with so liberal a 
conception of the historic Church, it will ob- 
viate later misunderstanding if some prelimi- 
nary statement be made as to what was in mind 
when it was asserted that this exposition would 
be made largely in personal terms. It is de- 
signed to avoid systematic exposition and only 
incidentally to appeal to logical argument for 
the sake of describing what the Church means 
to one inconspicuous member of it: to catch 
and crystallize, so far as possible, the more 
subtle and fluid causes for its appeal. 

The point of doing this is simply to give 
expression to a factor of experience that is rich 
in satisfaction and suggestive of satisfactions 
even richer, not yet realized, but promised, and 
(as it seems) assured. And though the purpose 
is definitely not apologetic, yet it is not im- 
probable that the result may prove so,—a con- 
sequence not to be deplored. Since Christianity 
is so intensely personal, it may be that the rea- 
son so much of its intellectual defense proves 
futile even when it is sound, is because the per- 
sonal term is so often lacking. A man is oftener 
won to a movement or drawn to a system of 
thought by the fact that it is shared in and held 
by this one and that, than because the move- 
ment has inherent claims or the system of 


6 Values of Catholic Fatth 


thought is warrantable. Perhaps this is why 
so many bad causes win such devoted followers 
and such demonstrably false systems have such 
enthusiastic adherents. 

Religion is an experience; the representa- 
tion of it therefore in terms of experience is 
always worth the effort. 


II 
THE MASS 


“Tantum ergo Sacramentum 
V eneremur cernui: 
Et antiquum documentum 
_ Novo cedat ritui: 
Praestet fides supplementum 
Sensuum defectut.” 


i 


THERE Is an old saying that it is the Mass 
that matters. And in a variety of ways this is 
true. For Catholics generally, their religion 
centers in the Mass, and all their religious 
practice has direct or indirect relation to it. 
And contrariwise what differentiates Protes- 
tants is their repudiation of the term and of the 
greater part of the cycle of ideas connoted by 
it: indicated by their custom of designating this 
sacrament almost exclusively as the Lord’s 
Supper, of relegating the service to the back- 


8 Values of Catholic Faith 


ground of their worship, and of celebrating it 
infrequently and without the ceremonial ad- 
juncts otherwise usual with them. In a com- 
munion like the Anglican where both Catholic 
and Protestant influences are at work, the con- 
flict is unfortunately most acute just at this 
point. And nothing might seem more to wit- 
ness to the evil of schism than that it should 
render the sacrament of love and unity the 
occasion of bitterness and discord. It is the 
supreme instance of how the principle of evil, 
once it is permitted to assert itself, takes ad- 
vantage of our weakness and unworthiness to 
profane the most holy things. 

While this must reluctantly be acknowl- 
edged, it should not and it need not interfere. 
And it does not interfere, if instead of per- 
mitting the restless mind to seek to explain 
away or even penetrate the essential mysteries, 
the soul submits itself to the influences of that 
most good thing which the Saviour has given. 

And whatever the circumstances of the cel- 
ebration of the service of the altar these influ- 
ences are really the same. Whether it be with 
ali the majestic ceremonial of a great cathedral 
and the use of all those accessories of worship 
developed by the pious taste and skill of many 
centuries, or whether it be in a little country 


The Mass 9 


church, stripped bare of everything commonly 
thought to dignify and beautify the service, if 
there be but reverent faith and humble devo- 
tion, it is precisely in both cases an initiation 
into the divine presence: there comes over the 
soul that sense of awe that bespeaks the near- 
ness of God. The splendour and the simplicity 
alike fade from the consciousness. This is the 
house of God; this is the gate of heaven. 

Under the spell of the hour and the place, 
in response to the cadences of immemorial 
words in which for centuries aspiration and de- 
votion have expressed themselves, the sense 
deepens that what happens here in time is in- 
deed the representation of an action that has 
its counterpart in eternity. For a little while 
time and space fall away: what is done and 
what is said almost cease to be symbolism, 
rather become that ineffable mystery into which 
even the angels scarce dare to look. The spirit 
is uplifted and unites itself with the whole com- 
pany of heaven to laud and magnifiy the Holy 
Name. A gleam from that place where there 
is no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to 
shine in it, for the glory of God doth lighten it, 
and the Lamb is the light thereof, irradiates 
the inmost consciousness, is an intimation of the 
beatific vision. 


IO Values of Catholic Fatth 


This experience is constituted of many 
factors. It is a fabric of most complex weave: 
every thread of which is finest-spun silk or 
gossamer filaments of sheerest linen, or leaf of 
thinnest, purest gold. It is intricate and lovely; 
_but compact, firm, of quality most durable; in- 
finite in quantity, for it has neither beginning 
nor end. Tears and prayers, joy and sorrow, 
hopes and fears, penury and abundance, have 
all gone to its weaving—the deepest, widest, 
highest experiences of humanity. And the hand 
at the loom is God’s. 

The contemplation of it in this and that 
light—in Christendom’s early dawn, in its 
noonday glory, in our time’s dull twilight, must - 
but enhance the essential beauty of the pattern 
and reveal its intrinsic strength. There is mar- 
vel in the very thought that somewhere and 
under such strangely contrasted circumstances, 
the Mass has been celebrated every day since 
Jesus blessed bread and cup at the Last Supper. 

We read frequently in St. Paul’s letters of 
salutations from the church in the house of 
Aquila, of Priscilla, of Nymphas, and of other 
persons: indicating how necessarily small and 
secret were the church centers in those Apos- 
tolic days. It is pleasant to think of the Eu- 
charist as celebrated in them. It is early morn- 


The Mass Il 


ing and the cool sunlight just touches the tops 
of cypress trees and expels the shadows from 
the marble colonnade that leads from the low 
Greek house to the garden below the sloping 
lawns. There, in a recess formed by box and 
screened by olive trees, stands a rude stone altar 
on which sacrifices were once offered to the old, 
forgotten gods of Roman ancestors. Nearby is 
entrance to the elaborately constructed cata- 
comb beneath, burying ground or church in per- 
ilous times of persécution. Voices, in tones of 
-exultant gladness, chant, now a Latin hymn, 
now the Kyrie eleison from the liturgy. The 
rude, antique stone is gay with fresh flowers and 
bright with little jets of light that burn in 
quaint oil-lamps set here and there upon it. The 
air is pungent with perfumes, cedar and box, 
meadowsweet and frankincense. Before the al- 
tar stands an old man, clad in a round white 
garment of wool—the casula or “little woolen 
house.” Bending over the altar, he blesses 
bread and wine. Presently he turns, gives little 
flakes of the white bread to the people kneeling 
round about, and offers them the cup. There 1s 
the noble Roman matron whose house it is, a 
few of her friends from similar households, 
the servants of the villa, shepherds who tend 
her flocks on the Campagna, maidens who 


12 Values of Catholic Faith 


weave the fleece into wool, young men who clip 
the box and prune the ilex. Every face is radiant 
with joy, every eye bright with the vision of 
things unseen and eternal. They will go forth 
presently, every one of them to difficulty, some 
to persecution, some to torture, some to death; 
but none to fear. They know themselves re- 
deemed from the power of the world. They 
are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. Upon them 
the ends of the world are come. Imperial Rome 
will crumble and paganism decay; they are the 
hope and the promise of the future. And, even 
humanly speaking, how right they were! 

A millennium passed, and in the twelfth 
century that pristine promise seemed to have 
achieved fulfilment. The Church was not only 
obviously catholic, but imperial; wherein per- 
haps lay the seeming that passed for reality. 
But to appearance, in the western world all life 
was touched by the Christian religion; every- 
where the Gospel was preached and the sacra- 
ments were administered. Children, as soon 
after birth as might be, were brought to the 
parish priest to be made members of Christ’s 
kingdom. Mothers quickly followed to be 
churched and offer thanksgiving. Sundays and 
holy-days, all the able-bodied of the community 
gathered about the altar to confess their sins, 


The Mass 13 


hear mass, or receive communion. The sick at 
home were anointed with oil in the name of the 
Lord and the sacrament was carried to them. 
If two lovers agreed to marry, their banns 
were cried from the parish church. At every 
wedding there was an offering of the Eucharist, 
at every funeral a requiem. At seed-time and 
harvest, processions, led by the village clergy, 
the people following and singing hymns and 
litanies, marched through the fields, praying 
for a blessing on the crops or thanking God for 
the fruits of the earth that were stored up in 
barns. When war came—and then the dream 
of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel 
still fired adventurous hearts—captain and 
soldier on the eve of departure consecrated 
sword or javelin on the altar and kept before 
it a vigil of prayer. Literature, music, art were 
the handmaids of religion. What Thomas 
Aquinas, Anselm, Bernard did to present the 
faith to the intellect, Dante, Adam de St. 
Victor, Giotto di Bordone did to interpret it 
in terms of rapturous beauty to the imagina- 
tion. All over Europe, and nowhere more than 
in England, were religious houses in which men 
or women, dedicated to the love and service of 
God, dwelt together in fraternal unity. 

There is a lovely vale in the East Riding 


14 Values of Catholic Faith 


of Yorkshire, midst the downs that rise above 
Ripon and Knaresborough and sweep thence to 
the North Sea. It is watered by the River Skell; 
and there for long has stood, near the banks of 
the gentle stream, the Cistercian abbey of 
Fountains. The pure Gothic church stands at 
the head of the valley, and about it are clus- 
tered the white monastic buildings, centering 
upon the cloister. Long stretches of green sward 
slope to the bright waters of the Skell, pierced 
only by pebbled paths that lead through the 
woods and over the downs to the castle of the 
lord of the manor hard by and to the neigh- 
bouring villages. To Fountains, despite their 
parish churches, many of the people round 
about bring their children to be christened, send 
them thither on weekdays for schooling. Here 
they come for advice in disputes with each 
other, for medicine if they are ill, for consola- 
tion if they are in trouble, for absolution if 
they have fallen into sin. On Sunday and holy- 
day they love to come to communal mass. Es- 
pecially do they love to come on festival occa- 
sions when are gathered here congregations so 
typical of the universality of the Church; and 
kneel, though it be far down in the nave a long 
way from the great, white high altar with its 
carved figures of our Lord and his saints, while 


The Mass 15 


mass is sung. All now is bright with lights, gay 
with flowers, and sweet with incense. The rough 
and ready King Henry the Second is present, 
but kneeling outside the sanctuary; while his 
chancellor Becket (who in the age of splendour 
was yet to achieve martyrdom) is enthroned 
above him. There are present also the lord of 
their own manor, peers of the realm, bishops, 
priests, monks even from far-off Glastonbury, 
and throngs of countryfolk and villagers: high 
and low, rich and poor, the rulers and the 
ruled, are as one family in offering the Eucha- 
ristic sacrifice. 

Verily, it seemed an age of faith. As in the 
day of persecution, suffering and martyrdom 
consecrated the world to God, so in this age 
it seemed that the splendour of the Church was 
consecrating mankind to Christ afresh. But the 
days were so soon to come when the Church 
was to know neither persecution nor splendour ! 

Half a millennium has passed; and, follow- 
ing upon an era of confusions and disasters, 
the Church has fallen into a deadening respect- 
ability : and is regarded, by the majority of men 
at least, with an indifference that is harder to 
bear than their scorn and opposition or their 
credulity and patronage. Our own experience 
is of this period. Persecution and splendour 


16 Values of Catholic Faith 


are for us almost incredible episodes of improb- 
able history. And yet, though now there can 
no longer be the rapture of martyrdom or the 
inspiration of imperialism, that which is of 
the Church’s essential function—continuously 
to. offer the Eucharistic sacrifice—makes its 
appeal again and again, and now and then stirs 
even the most unlikely from indifference to 
faith. 

It would be difficult to suggest a farther cry 
from early Rome or medieval Fountains than 
to a provincial town of modern America. The 
town, so vividly recalled, is moreover devoid 
of natural beauty even as to its setting, for it 
lies in a stretch of flat seaboard country of 
which the coastline could not be straighter than 
it is, and which is washed by a sea that can no- 
where be more monotonous than just here. And 
if that were not sufficient in itself to discourage 
human beings from living in it, some of them— 
those particularly interested in its commercial 
possibilities—have vulgarized even the straight- 
ness and monotony by the inept and inartistic 
conveniences they fancy (and likely with good 
reason) to be desired by the tourist patrons of 
the unfortunate vicinity. In the middle of that 
now extended and absolutely regular parallel- 
ogram devised to accommodate innumerable 


The Mass 17 


hotels and boarding-houses, distant from sight 
and sound of the sea stands a small, brownish- 
yellow wooden church. 

Into this building, with obscure intention, 
an impressionable unformed boy wandered in 
the course of a walk from a country-house not 
far from the town, one early spring morning 
many years ago. [he interior of the church, 
though in less obtrusively bad taste, is a piece 
with the outside and with the hotels and board- 
ing-houses that smotheringly surround it. It was 
- here, however, that for the first time in his life 
this boy heard, uttered in a voice which de- 
vout reverence made musical, and intense sin- 
cerity made magical, the words of the Mass. 
The words doubtless meant little or nothing to 
him, if indeed he distinguished them as words. 
But the experience of kneeling there in the still- 
ness, broken only by the soft tones of that 
beautiful voice; of watching the slight move- 
ments of the white-robed figure before the al- 
tar, not understood but evidently of deep sig- 
nificance; of observing the expressions on the 
faces of the score or more persons at their 
prayers; the new thoughts that came to him and 
stirred his interest and curiosity, the inexpe- 
rienced emotion that subtly pervaded him,— 
all was an initiation into something that ever 


18 Values of Catholic Fatth 


since has demanded of him all his best for ex- 
planation, and when that best has been given 
yet falls far short of adequately describing, does 
hardly more than faintly suggest, its worth and 
wonder and beauty. | 


Ds 


The point made is this: the appeal, to the 
household of the noble Roman matron in ear- 
ly days, to king and prelate, monk and peasant, 
at the height of the middle age, to the modern 
boy in the drab and commonplace American 
town, was made by the same service—the Mass 
of the Catholic Church, whether it were said in 
Greek or Latin or English; and that the nature 
of the appeal was much the same, the sense of 
awe that bespeaks the nearness of God. 

But doubtless this appeal is susceptible of 
more particular analysis, and the effort to 
measure and appraise may have its own intel- 
lectual value and as well prove suggestive and 
stimulating to others. As criticism may directly 
contribute to the development of art, though 
obviously the critic is of slight importance as 
compared with the artist, so a truth may have 
a better chance to establish itself in imperfect 
minds when adequately defined, though of 
course no apologetic can equal the truth it de- 


The Mass 19 


fends. So likewise analysis may help others to 
it, safeguard it, ward off from it alien and ab- 
normal ideas. Analysis has its danger, and the 
history of Christianity illustrates the greatness 
of that danger and the ease with which men 
run into it—the danger of reducing the norm 
to a mere stereotype. But if this is borne in 
mind the point need be laboured no further. 

Since, as was carefully affirmed at the out- 
set, the Mass as celebrated in the Catholic 
Church is constituted of many factors, so the 
appeal it makes, the experience of assisting at it 
with recollection and purposeful intention, is 
many sided. Only salient characteristics may be 
noted; and of these perhaps the chief is wor- 
ship. Ihe Mass richly satisfies this inherent 
need of men. 

That worship is an inherent need scarcely 
requires insistence. All peoples have had a re- 
ligion of some sort, and religion invariably in- 
volves worship. Indeed, so inalienable a part of 
religion is it, that the worship often survives 
after the religion has perished. Moreover, all 
individual men have or have had some kind of 
religion. And if they do not, it is because they 
have cast it out of their consciousness by em- 
phatic and continued assertion of unbelief or 
habitual conduct wholly inconsistent with its 


20 Values of Catholic Fatth 


profession. This religion may be poor, thin, pit- 
iably inadequate as intellectual theory, moral 
guide, or spiritual help; it may be crude, un- 
lovely, barbarous, or it may have been cleverly 
all but argued away; yet remnants of it and 
capacities for it remain in every man. And even 
these remnants and capacities imply worship, 
the neglect or repudiation of which incurs the 
sense of guilt, the conviction of duty refused 
or of obligation unfulfilled; and when such a 
course is persisted in impels, through sheer self- 
defense, the assertion of unbelief. 

The essence of an idea is best got at by ex- 
cluding from it associated ideas, however ger- 
mane they may be. By such process complexity © 
is frequently resolved into the simplicity that is 
best understood, but which, as a matter of fact, 
is usually less familiar. Thus the common con- 
ception of worship is exceedingly complex, and 
therefore—for all its variety—excessively 
blurred; whereas in essence worship is the re- 
verse of complex; and if it is to be understood 
how the idea has threaded through all religion 
under such a varied multiplicity of forms, it is 
necessary to arrive at the simplicity. That may 
best be done by ruthlessly excluding kindred 
notions commonly involved in the concept. 

Worship, then, is not prayer. It does not 


The Mass 21 


necessarily involve prayer, though it is usually 
accompanied both by formal articulate prayer 
and by effective prayer of various kinds. The 
hour of worship is indeed the most suitable 
time for praying, and so the Church is contin- 
ually insisting. But it is obvious that prayer can 
be, and, alas! too often is, divorced from any 
sort of worship whatsoever. 

Nor, again, is worship communion with the 
Deity, though so truly does the Eucharistic 
worship of the Catholic Church afford the 
supreme opportunity for such communion. It is 
easy to over-emphasize this accompaniment of 
worship, and it is frequently done by Anglicans, 
as is witnessed by the official title they give the 
Mass and by their less-defensible common cus- 
tom of calling it ‘the Communion service.” In 
truth the desire for communion with God is 
much less instinctive and general than the need 
for worship, it presupposes far greater advance 
in religious culture, it involves a particular mor- 
al and spiritual preparation, and it demands a 
more strenuous effort of mind and spirit, to the 
result that when the idea of communion obscures 
that of worship the sense and the effect of both 
are considerably diminished; and such, indeed, 
has been the case within many Anglican com- 
munities. 


52 Values of Catholic Fatth 


Nor, once more is worship the offering of 
sacrifice, in spite of the fact that the Mass is 
a sacrificial service. The offering of acceptable 
sacrifices to God requires even deeper apprecia- 
tion and clearer understanding than does com- 
munion; it lies well along in the way of perfec- 
tion, as the author of the Epistle to the He- 
brews has it, after the principles of the doc- 
trine of Christ may be safely left behind and 
the foundation thereof has been securely laid. 
If then worship be not identified with prayer, 
communion, or sacrifice, it will not be necessary 
to differentiate it from preaching, instruction, 
or the like, with which it is of course generally 
and rightly accompanied. | 

Stripped of these associated notions, wor- 
ship, and particularly the Mass as the great 
act of worship, still retains all that was claimed 
for it in noting its effect upon casually-selected 
typical representatives of Christian experience 
—an initiation into the divine presence, the 
sense of awe that bespeaks the nearness of 
God. That is the inexplicable lure to worship, 
its moving appeal to the human spirit, and par- 
ticipation in it involves for man the recognition 
of God, implies confession of him, and witness 
to him. Even if such participation be but form- 
al, and the spiritual benefits unfelt and unreal- 


The Mass 23 


ized, yet there is, for what it is worth (and it 
is worth something), formal lining up and 
ranging of self upon the divine side, acceptance 
(at least acquiescence) in that for which the 
cult, broadly-speaking, stands. 

That worship means subjectively the sense 
of God’s presence, and objectively recognition 
of his nearness and accessibility, logically finds 
expression in the utterance of the creed of the 
cult as a central act and fact. And that utter- 
ance of the creed becomes for the soul draw- 
‘ing nigh unto God a confession of faith, a 
declaration of loyalty, a proclamation (in 
words that the whole body of believers has 
accepted) of his experience; it becomes the 
symbol of witness that the worshipper means 
by his worship all that the Catholic Church 
means in the offering of it. To extract the 
creed from it would render worship ambiguous, 
would tend to separate it from the great stream 
of tradition, from the universal Christian ex- 
perience, of which it is so inseparable a part. 

And since for the soul, worship is the sense 
and recognition of the Divine presence, it is 
joyous and glad in character, most readily 
gives voice to song; finds in melody and har- 
mony fitting media for expression; and instinc- 
tively clothes itself in outward forms of beauty. 


24. Values of Catholic Faith 


It is this spontaneous expression of worship in 
terms of beauty, so characteristic of Catholic 
religion, that has inspired and guided the de- 
velopment of the art and music, of the cere- 
monial and ritual of the Church, and has cen- 
tered it in the Eucharist. For every beautiful 
thing that Catholic hands have fashioned or 
minds conceived, traces back to the desire of 
disciples, to the efforts of pilgrims in the Way, 
to make beautiful the memorial that Jesus com- 
manded them to offer. 


2 

In that worship is the universal expression 
of religion, and its essence the conviction and 
confession of God’s nearness, is perceived the 
divine economy, which devised the great act 
of Christian worship to be the means of so full 
a realization of God’s presence as to involve, 
not only communion with him, but participation 
in his life. If for the moment the idea of com- 
munion was sharply differentiated from wor- 
ship, it was partly at least that the fact that 
the Mass as occasion for deepest communion 
with God might be fully felt. It is the very ap- 
preciation of this fact that has led Catholic 
theologians so greatly to stress the doctrine 
of the Real Presence in their Eucharistic teach- 


The Mass 25 


ing. Herein is the justification likewise for An- 
glicans calling the Mass by the term that so dis- 
tinctly implies this doctrine. 

And it does denote a truth that is of the 
very essence of the sacrament, that expresses 
the purpose for which it was given as chief 
means of grace,—the fulfilling of the imperfect 
soul with the divine life, the effecting of that 
union of man with God which was the supreme 
intent of the Saviour’s incarnation. It denotes 
a truth, moreover, which reveals the immeas- 
urable depth and breadth of the divine love— 
that as God identified himself in the person of 
the Son with needful humanity, so he wills 
to unite with himself that humanity redeemed 
in Christ. And since to human glimpse or ob- 
servation the manifestation of God in Christ 
was brief, the presence of the Saviour assured 
in the Eucharist becomes, as has so often been 
truly said, a veritable extension of the Incarna- 
tion. 

Communion is, therefore, for the faithful 
soul an intimation of its ultimate destiny; and 
none the less for that it is often not so real- 
ized; and that it must always be represented 
under sacramental forms—outward signs of in- 
ward happenings—in that we are partakers of 
a sacramental covenant. 


26 Values of Catholic Faith 


God’s choice of sacraments as means for 
the working out of the redemptive process is, 
after all, of a piece with the structure of the 
very universe he made, the reality of which we 
‘perceive only under forms, the forms of time 
and space; and man’s use of sacraments is 
analogous to all his other experience. The re- 
ligious interpretation of experience does but 
infuse it with a deeper purpose and illumine it 
with a clearer light. And this is true with re- 
gard to every interpretation of experience, save 
that strange delusion (now happily being aban- 
doned by all serious thinkers) that there is no 
reality except those objective things that can be 
seen and felt, that there is nothing less real 
(they strangely seemed to think) than their 
own reflections upon those things. That this 
contradiction was vicious and absurd it is no 
longer necessary to insist, for the objective 
things in the universe have of late played too 
many strange tricks and indulged in too fan- 
tastic antics at the expense of the materialists. 
It has even been amusing to note that the latest 
and most popular theory of relativity, devel- 
oped by a physicist who disdains metaphysics, 
when it came to be interpreted by a philos- 
opher, could best be illustrated by likening the 
relation of the finite and the infinite it involved 


The Mass 27 


to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. 
The doctrine of the Incarnation to the Catholic 
mind is a truism: yet it causes no elation, only 
relief, to have this truism chosen for the ex- 
ample that will help others understand the com- 
plexities in which theory, experimentation, and 
observation are constantly landing the mathe- 
matician, the physicist, and the astronomer, not 
to speak of the philosopher and metaphysician. 
But it does justify—and for this he is grateful 
—the ancient assertion that belief is not diffi- 
cult, even when its every aspect cannot satis- 
factorily be rationalized. All that belief re- 
quires is credible evidence and trustworthy wit- 
ness. 

The untrained mind finds far greater dif- 
ficulty in understanding the A, B, C’s of mod- 
ern scientific hypothesis (for all that the ig- 
noramus is forever noisily appealing to it) than 
it does in accepting the alleged subtleties of the 
Catholic theology of the sacraments or even 
(as there will be occasion later to note) those 
of the Athanasian Creed. And for this reason: 
the witness to the sacraments is supremely 
trustworthy, and the evidence is not only credit- 
able, but overwhelming; moreover, the doc- 
trine is pragmatically verifiable. ‘“His the word 
that spake it,” is to the pilgrim in the Way sim- 


28 Values of Catholic Faith 


ply an undeniable fact. And—to complete the 
famous rhyme—‘‘What his word doth make 
it, that I believe and take it,’ becomes an ex- 
perience that produces a passionate conviction 
of the truth so tritely expressed. 

And all this is said with full onbuetlaies 
that the precise mode of the Real Presence of 
Christ in the Eucharist is not defined, or if 
defined has not received universal assent. It 
must be obvious that many truths are accepted, 
even where there is dispute or uncertainty 
about some of the implications of those truths. 

But rather than seeking to define meticu- 
lously all the implications of ineffable truth, 
the pilgrim is more concerned to realize its 
essence, to enter upon the experience of it;— 
in this specific instance, to taste and see how 
gracious the Lord is. 

“O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus 
sumitur; recoliter memoria passionis ejus: 
mens implitur gratia: et futurae gloriae nobis 
pignus datur, alleluia.” 

Perhaps this old antiphon for the second 
vespers of Corpus Christi is sufficient state- 
ment of the sense of this communion afforded 
by the Mass. It is a sacred feast wherein, feed- 
ing upon the symbols of the divine life, the 
life itself is given unto us. We recall the suf- 


The Mass 29 


fering and the sacrifice that made possible this 
gift, and by that memory our minds are puri- 
fied, for the new life flowing in fills mind as 
well as spirit; and in this cleansing, refreshing, 
invigorating, renewing activity within is con- 
ceived the glory to come, what this foretaste 
promises. Thought, feeling, will, reacting to 
this inflowing life, unite to reproduce, and ap- 
proximately do reproduce, that life’s character. 
In the multiplication and intensification of such 
communions will be realized the Kingdom of 


God. 
4. 


In the conception of the Mass as a sacrifice 
the highest note is reached. The Eucharistic 
Sacrifice represents in unique and absolute way 
the entire redemptive process. Its full and 
proper understanding involves every essential 
concept of Christian theology —the Trinity, 
the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Church, 
and the Sacraments. And this doubtless ac- 
counts for the degree to which the Mass has 
played its part in all Catholic belief and prac- 
tice. And in view of the fact that nothing is so 
dificult as for men to keep their intellectual 
balance, it accounts for the fact that in the mid- 
dle age the Mass at times obscured other im- 


30 Values of Catholic Faith 


portant aspects of the faith. There were of 
course other than theological influences at 
work, indeed quite untheological but powerful 
influences; and between them there have been 
periods when the emphasis on the sacrifice of 
the Mass was so disproportionate as to twist 
awry the entire Catholic system. The Church, 
so wise in her toleration up to a certain limit, 
paid the penalty when she overstepped it. In 
the terrific reaction half of Christendom was 
torn from Catholic unity, and even in the por- 
tion that remained Catholic, for many the sac- 
rificial nature of the Eucharist was to be ob- 
scured. 

Fundamental and far-reaching as is the sac- 
rifice of the Mass, yet the Author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews was right in holding 
that the true apprehension of sacrifice pertains 
to the mind perfected in Christ. And yet—and 
fortunately—there is no definition of the doc- 
trine. None has been attempted by the Univer- 
sal Church, any more than has been attempted 
a definition of the Atonement. The fact of 
both, and they are inextricably united, is pre- 
éminent; but explanations have not been offered: 
to the result, that though the neglect of 
neither can be condoned, yet there will be dif- 
ferent aspects of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, as 


The Mass an 


of the Sacrifice of the Cross, stressed at dif- 
ferent times by different groups or persons. 
Since this essay disclaimed any effort at 
systematic exposition of any Chrisitan doctrine, 
no apology is needed for suggesting only such 
elements of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as appeal 
to one pilgrim in the Way or for the passing 
over of other, possibly more important, fac- 
tors. What one pilgrim most deeply apprehends, 
what seems necessary for any pilgrim to try 
to understand, is just this: it is the offering and 
pleading of what Jesus did on the cross, what 
he does now and now is, and of ourselves by 
this sacrament united with him. It is the offer- 
ing of Christ—and more, nor less can be said 
—of Christ, not as slain, but as slain and living 
again, and of souls to whom his life is given. 


“O salutaris hostia 
Quae coeli pandis ostium: 
Bella premunt hostilia, 
Da robur, fer auxilium.” 


Lex orandi lex credendi is a saying as 
familiar as it is true; and though it is not as 
familiar, yet is it also true that belief finds ade- 
quate expression in the hymns of the Church. 
To know the hymns most frequently sung in a 
community would be to know its beliefs, and 


32 Values of Catholic Faith 


what is as important, its emotions about its 
beliefs. It was a profound sense of the intimate 
relation between the Incarnation and the Mass 
that led St. Thomas to compose his hymn 
Verbum supernum for the office of Corpus 
Christi; just as it is a realization of the con- 
nection between the Atonement and the Eu- 
charistic Sacrifice that has suggested the sing- 
ing of the last two verses of that hymn, O sal- 
aturis hostia, both at Mass and at Benediction, 
when, as it were, the Immortal Victim is ex- 
posed for adoration. * 

The appeal of the Sacrifice of the Mass is 
not the idea that thereby God is being propiti- 
ated,—that has little if any part in Catholic 
thought: but that the Saviour, compassionate 


*Perhaps this is the reason for the appeal of the service of 
Benediction, as an adjunct of the Liturgy, modern, comparatively, 
though it be; its appeal as most satisfying and uplifting worship. 
For as worship is the sense and recognition of the nearness of God, 
in the exposed Sacrament there is an outward and visible symbol 
of that nearness, and in the lifting up of the Host for benediction 
there is the dramatic representation of the divine Victim blessing 
the followers in his Way. 

It is often objected by Anglicans that the service of Benediction 
is inconsistent with the essential purposes of the Sacrament, because 
the Presence is vouchsafed for communion and there is no promise of 
it for other purpose. But may it not be that this is a consequence of 
their frequent somewhat undue emphasis upon the factor of com- 
munion in the celebration of Mass, and of an under-emphasis upon 
the Mass just as opportunity for worship and also of its sac- 
rificial nature? The Real Presence is indubitably vouchsafed for 
communion, but if the Eucharist be a sacrifice, must the Presence not 
also be vouchsafed for the purpose of sacrifice? 


The Mass 33 


and merciful, has opened the gates of heaven 
and illuminates the path that leads to them,— 
nay, has indeed stepped down along it that he 
may give support to the weary or fainting pil- 
grim, that as the fair shepherd he may bear 
home upon his shoulders the bruised and wan- 
dering sheep. It is something such as is sug- 
gested by this imagery that the worshipper 
feels with regard to the Eucharistic sacrifice 
and that is voiced by the hymn so often sung 
at the offering of it. 


Ki. 

There can scarcely be doubt that in the 
multiform appeal of the Mass, worship, com- 
munion, and sacrifice go deepest. But there are 
other factors which unite with these to give 
that appeal its inexhaustible richness and vari- 
ety. 

It was said that a comparatively full under- 
standing of Catholic theology is necessary to a 
right appreciation of the Mass as sacrifice and 
communion; and if this is true there might 
seem a certain rashness on the part of the 
Church in placing the Eucharist at the heart 
of its devotional and practical system. And so 
there might be were not the Mass itself the 
most effective teacher of the Catholic faith. 


34. Values of Catholic Faith 


There is no very satisfactory definition of 
Inspiration, as the study of scripture informs; 
but inadequate as any definition may be, Chris- 
tians are generally as certain of the fact of it 
as of any tenet of the Faith. It is a conviction 
indeed, that even the most radical critics pro- 
fess to share. Men have not needed the approvy- 
al of a recent philosopher in order to trust and 
be guided by their intuition. And the inspira- 
tion of scripture is an intuition that all Chris- 
tians feel. Whole books of the Bible and in- 
definite passages thereof are cavilled at: this 
ascribed to Moses, to Isaiah, to St. Paul is 
so obviously by another hand; this Psalm ig- 
norantly attributed to David by tradition is in- 
dubitably postexilic; this passage is an inter- 
polation, that a late addition, another the 
emendation of an editor, a fourth a mere com- 
plex of contradictory texts. All this in general 
may be granted or not, for it is noteworthy 
that no two objectors ever agree in detail, 
nevertheless for all Christian people the con- — 
viction, the intuition, about inspiration re- 
mains. It is much the same feeling that, the 
more he studies them, the Catholic has about 
the liturgies of the Church. This or that one 
may be faulted or elements of it may be 
criticized—the canon has been detruncated, the 


The Mass 35 


Gloria in excelsis dislocatéd, extraneous matter 
introduced, heretical influence at work—never- 
theless the intuition persists much as it does 
with regard to scripture. Since the word in- 
spiration has been technically appropriated by 
Biblical theology, it is not ordinarily used, 
though in reality it is the most appropriate to 
express what the Catholic-minded student feels 
about the Liturgy. And in no particular is in- 
spiration, that is to say, the guiding influence of 
the Holy Spirit, more evident than in the deft- 
ness, the skill, with which the Mass has been. 
developed to teach the very faith requisite to a 
right apprehension of its holy mysteries. 

To make the point a detailed examination 
is hardly necessary. It will be sufficient to do 
no more than suggest salient and characteristic 
instances. The purpose of the Creed in Euchar- 
istic worship has already been noted; but the 
effect of frequent repetition of that traditional 
summary of the faith, that enumeration of its 
leading articles, can not be overestimated. Even 
the most unlettered must gain from it familiar- 
ity with the essentials of Christian doctrine— 
the Trinity, the Incarnation, the death, resur- 
rection, and ascension of the Saviour, the gift 
of the Holy Ghost, and the notes of the 
Church. Doubtless in this distracted age the 


36 Values of Catholic Faith 


notes of the Church need further explanation; 
for the note of unity is particularly obscured 
by division and that of holiness is dimmed by 
sin. But, indeed, such explanation is continu- 
ally afforded by the Ordinary of the Mass, that 
part which varies from season to season and 
from day to day. The Collect, the Epistle, the 
Gospel, the Proper Preface, the Post-commu- 
nion prayers, the Introit, the Gradual, and the 
hymns chosen, all contribute to elaborate the 
central teaching of the service itself. The 
Christian Year, which the Mass follows faith- 
fully, is in itself a systematic exposition of 
Catholic faith and practice. And there is also 
the Sermon, which (however much the oppor- 
tunity of preaching has been abused by individ- 
uals) should be and in the great majority of 
cases is the setting forth of the Gospel. Obvi- 
ously as long as fallible men are the only ma- 
terial for preachers, infallibility will not be 
found in the pulpit; but by and large and in 
the long run, for all that heresy and disloyalty 
are vociferous and attract attention, none can 
doubt that the Gospel is continuously and con- 
sistently preached in the Catholic Church. 
An examination of the teaching efficiency 
of the Mass, during the course of a single year, 
would demonstrate that every chief article of 


The Mass 27 


the faith is set forth, not only in the brief form- 
ula of credal statement but in particular and 
with illustrative detail; that every leading 
event in the life of the Saviour and in the lives 
of his early followers, is rehearsed; that, in 
short, a fairly complete outline of the Imitation 
of Christ is afforded the pilgrim in the Way 
with all the moral practice it involves; and that 
along with this is put before him, by sugges- 
tion, direction, and example, all his chief duties 
as member of the Church—prayer, in a great 
variety of its aspects, fasting, almsgiving, con- 
fession of sin, the receiving of Holy Com- 
munion with its due preparation and thanksgiy- 
ing, the obligation of worship and of sacrifice, 
and the fact of fellowship with the brethren, 
with the faithful departed, and with the saints 
in heaven. 

Nothing better in the way of Christian edu- 
cation could be devised for the pilgrim than 
precisely that which the Church lays down as 
his duty—regular attendance on Sundays and 
holydays of obligation, at the very least, upon 
the Mass. * 

7 If there were no other reasons (and there are many) why the 
substitution of Matins for Mass as the chief service on most Sundays 
of the Year is indefensible, it would be sufficient that Matins pro- 
vides opportunity neither for communion nor sacrifice, and that it 


emphasizes instruction beyond the capacity of the average worshipper 
to assimilate. Furthermore, Matins, except occasionally and in con- 


38 Values of Catholic Faith 
6. 


The Eucharist, as the breaking of one 
bread and the drinking of one cup, is often 
called the sacrament of unity, and the partak- 
ing of it together is held to be the sign of 
their mutual recognition by different groups of 
the Lord’s followers. Alas! there are groups 
in Christendom who refuse each other acknowl- 
edgment of being in the Way. And it is little 
compensation, after these centuries, that such 
denial often indicates strong convictions as to 
the nature and obligations of the pilgrimage; 
for it still remains that the followers of Jesus 
present to the world the strange spectacle of © 
being out of communion with each other, for 
reasons too subtle for its understanding or too 
unimportant for its consideration. Nor is this 
reproach turned away by admitting the justice 
of it, although the admission may absolve the 
pilgrim from the suspicion of indifference. He 
may yet follow along the Way in penitent hope- 
fulness, may still see in the one bread that of 
which the Saviour willed it to be the symbol; 
may believe, receiving it in repentant faith and 


sequence of particular pains on the part of the officiant, lacks unity. 
Its possibilities can only be realized by daily recitation, It is the 
Anglican substitute for part of the Divine Office, and should be in 
practice and in theory treated as such. 


The Mass 39 


charity, that he does his best to fulfil the Lord’s 
intention. And can more be demanded of him? 

St. Paul called the Church the body of 
Christ. In doing so he used a metaphor of 
which the full force can be appreciated only 
by understanding it as literally as may be; that 
is to say, if of that Church we reckon Christ 
the head and all those united with him its mem- 
bers, quite actually his eyes, ears, hands, feet. 
Jesus also, in calling the bread he gave his 
disciples at the Last Supper his body, used a 
metaphor, of which likewise we get the real 
meaning only if it is taken literally as a figure 
under which he indicates his very life, a truth 
of spiritual experience of which the Catholic is 
more passionately convinced than of any other. 
Therefore, since in the Eucharist Christ’s body 
is received, it follows that also is received the 
members of his body; or, since there is a cer- 
tain harshness in this expression, if in the Eu- 
charist Christ’s life is received, so also are his 
followers made partakers of each others’ life; 
what constitutes them brethren is that they 
have Christ’s life in them: or, again to vary the 
figure slightly, by their union with him they 
are united with each other. 

It is in respect of this that, despite all the 
divisions of Christendom, the Eucharist is in 


40 Values of Catholic Faith 


the highest sense the sacrament of fellowship. 
And if the sense of that fellowship is marred 
by disagreement or actually invalidated by 
schism so that the world can not perceive, nor, 
perceiving, believe in its reality, nevertheless 
the Eucharist remains the means whereby 
union may be ultimately effected. And that con- 
summation can be hastened in no better way 
than by faithful and loving communions. A true 
faith and a perfect love would fulfil the divine 
will, would mean the coming of the kingdom 
in power and glory. 


7 

‘There remains one value of the Mass, uni- 
versally witnessed to, yet generally underes- 
timated, which is that indicated by the 
Saviour’s words at the Last Supper: ‘“This do — 
in remembrance of me”’ (or, as they may more 
accurately be translated, ‘“This do for a me- 
morial of me); and which is brought out even 
more clearly in the gloss added in St. Paul’s 
tradition of the Institution: ‘For as often as ye 
eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show 
forth the Lord’s death until he come.” * 

Strangely enough, those who professedly 

*It will not be necessary to argue anew the bearing these ex- 


pressions also have in establishing the doctrine of the Eucharistic 
Sacrifice. 


The Mass 41 


emphasize this aspect of the Eucharist at the 
expense of almost all other considerations, sel- 
dom gather its full import. For rightly under- 
stood, the Mass, as the memorial of Calvary, 
is a dramatic representation of life redeemed 
by Jesus on the Cross and in the souls of men. 

And this conception of the Eucharist is the 
last to be given up, because it really is so rich 
in content and involves all and infinitely more 
than has been set forth here as constituting its 
appeal; and is not often stripped quite bare by 
those theologies that endeavour to void the 
sacraments of all grace and beauty. 

The Mass as memorial proclaims or shows 
forth, in Apostolic phrase, the Lord’s death 
until he come; and not his death only, but his 
self-sacrificing life that led up to death. It pro- 
claims too that on the third day he rose, and 
after that ascended to heaven and thence sent 
forth his Holy Spirit. The commemoration of 
Calvary is inevitably obvious and central in the 
service, but that the other aspects of the re- 
demptive life are commemorated it is necessary 
to be reminded only that on most occasions the 
Ordinary of the Mass sets forth some partic- 
ular instance of the earlier ministry; and that 
since Christians from the beginning have felt 
that Sunday was the day peculiarly appropriate 


42 Values of Catholic Faith 


for the Eucharist, there is always added the 
note of the Easter Joy; and that moreover in 
the Gloria in excelsis and in the Sanctus, there 
is the ever-repeated thought of Christ in heay- 
en; and in the invocation a perpetual memorial 
of the Holy Spirit. It would be a meticulous 
task more than to suggest how the rite itself, 
here and there and everywhere throughout, re- 
calls again and again the salient features of the 
Saviour’s ministry and many minor incidents 
and occasions of it. There is the prophetic wit- 
ness of the preparation of the world for Mes- 
siah’s coming in the reading from the Old 
Testament, ° and not only the rehearsal of in- | 
cident or teaching in the Gospel, but the appli- 
cation of it in Epistle and Sermon. The Introit, 
the Gradual, the Sequence, and the Glorias 
furnish added notes, and the whole faith is 
summed up in the accepted words of the Creed. 
The Prayer for the Church expresses the cath- 
olic intention in the offering of the Eucharist, 
and Sursum corda, Comfortable Words, Pref- 
ace, Sanctus, and Benedictus qui venit prepare 
for the solemn rehearsal of the events of the 
night on which the Lord was betrayed and of 
Ah. thcnibene replaces in the Anglican liturgy the Old Testa- 
ment lection. The Gloria in excelsis is, of course, dislocated in this 


liturgy, and most unhappily so. Its recitation or singing after con- 
secration is of the nature of anti-climax. 


The Mass 43 


the dread day following. What is done at the 
altar is a representation of what was done once 
for all on Calvary: it is the offering to the 
Eternal Father of the Lamb slain before the 
foundation of the world, of Christ who laid 
down his life and took it again, who gives that 
life under the symbols of his body and blood. 
This climax reached, communions are made, 
thanksgiving is said, the service is over. 
Through it all the priest performs a double 
role: he represents the Church before God, and 
Christ before his people. He represents Christ 
as prophet, priest, and king; for he proclaims 
anew the Gospel, he offers the eternal victim, 
he blesses with kingly power and authority. 

And not only does the ritual suggest all 
this to us by way of remembrance, but the cere- 
monial expresses the same ideas. By his careful 
movements and his prescribed manual acts, the 
celebrant dramatizes his priestly function; the 
dignity, the music and reverence, denote the ser- 
vice of the King; the incense, the prayer, the in- 
vocation of the Spirit, witness to the conscious- 
ness of the presence of God. Every ceremonial 
act has not only its own familiar symbolism but 
is rich with well-nigh infinite suggestion. ° 








® And this applies whether the ceremonial be elaborate or simple. 
It needs must vary with occasion, with temperament, with place. 


44. Values of Catholic Fatth 


Much of this may be felt, and yet when 
assisting at Mass or contemplating the eternal 
reality of which it is the outward representa- 
tion, the mind is conscious that it has but 
touched the edge of the mystery. want 

It is not an unfamiliar experience of the 
lover of nature to stand on a clear night in 
some open place or upon the deck of a ship at 
sea and survey the starlit heavens. He is en- 
tranced by the wonder and the glory of the 
visible scene, the illimitable canopy of the dark 
blue sky studded by innumerable stars that 
shine as jewels, with the splendour of the ruby, 
the diamond, the sapphire, and the opal; the 
Milky Way appearing as a great floor bestrewn 
by a profuse hand with marvelous pearls. With 
quiet pleasure he notes the familiar constella- 
tions, and calls by name the evening star that 
hangs suspended in the west, a perfect crystal 
reflecting a thousand lights. But as he gazes 
on and on, anon the admiration deepens into 
awe, for he begins to apprehend, if most im- 
perfectly, something of the real nature of the 
celestial panorama spread before him—the in- 
finite spaces and immeasurable distances, suns 
blazing, worlds whirling in _ inconceivable 
depths of emptiness, comets threading the in- 
tricate maze of the universe, light piercing 


The Mass 45 


darkness with incredible velocities beyond the 
limits of thought. Even his dim perception of 
the reality bewilders and confuses his inmost 
consciousness; and with painful effort he with- 
draws his mind from the contemplation as 
from something too aweful and too sublime. 
His thought can steady itself but by falling 
back upon some such figures as those to which 
the poetic and prophetic voice of the Book of 
Job once gave expression: 


“Where wast thou when the foundations of the earth 
were laid? 

When the morning stars sang together, and all the 
sons of God shouted for joy? 

Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; 
and caused the dayspring to know his place? 
Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or 

hast thou walked in search of the depth? 

Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for 
darkness, where is the place thereof? 

That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and 
that thou shouldest know the paths to the house 
thereof? 

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, 
or loose the bands of Orion? 

Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or 
canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? 

Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say 
unto thee, Here we are? 


46 Values of Catholic Fatth 


“TI know that thou canst do everything, and that no 
thought can be withholden from thee. 

I uttered that I understood not; things too wonder- 
ful for me, which I knew not... 

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but 
now mine eye seeth thee.” | 


No other experience suggests what takes 
place in the soul of the pilgrim wayfarer when, 
allured by the outward beauty of the Mass, he 
begins to contemplate the reality of which it is 
the representation. And truly it but suggests 
that stirring to its depths of all his conscious- 
ness. For if there be marvel in the dim appre- 
hension of the mysteries of time and space of 
which he is a part and which are the very forms 
under which he thinks and exists, in terms of 
which alone he can express himself, what shall 
there be when he contemplates the mystery of 
being infinite and eternal? Thought itself is 
baflled; and if he seeks words to express that 
for which he vainly struggles but passionately 
aspires, he can but say, in the simplest of all 
words, he gazes into love. Though baffled in 
his thought and almost bereft of speech, yet 
he turns not away from the cross, for thereon, 
in time and space he sees Jesus hanging, Jesus 
known, felt, handled, tasted, loved. He is com- 
forted, cleansed, strengthened, uplifted. Inex- 


The Mass 47 


pressible though it be, what Jesus does there 
reénacts itself within him. Deep calleth unto 
deep: Jesus from the cross to his despair, 
wretchedness, sinfulness, helplessness; he from 
the deep of his soul to the deep of the divine 
love. He knows, though he knows not how, 
that in Jesus’s dying, God redeems. In offering 
the Eucharist he pleads that death, in receiv- 
ing the Eucharist he tastes that redemption. 
With the priest at the altar, with Christ in 
heaven, he murmurs, ‘‘Our Father.’ He hears 
the response, cor ad cor loquitur, ** Son, broth- 
er, beloved.” Sin will never wholly dim nor 
reason ever quite deny the conviction that he 
is in the Way. 


“T tasted, and I hunger and thirst. Do thou speak 
the truth in my heart, for thou alone speakest it: and 
let me enter into my chamber and sing thee hymns of 
love, . . . remembering Jerusalem, and lifting up my 
heart to her, to Jerusalem, my home, Jerusalem, my 
mother, and to thee, her King, her Light, Father, 
Guide, her ineffable and infinite blessedness: and let 
me never turn away, until thou gatherest all that I am 
into the peace of that dearest mother, where are the 
first fruits of my spirit: and conform me to thyself, 
and confirm me for ever, my God, my Mercy.” ° 


*St. Augustine Confessions x, 27. 


IIT 
THE CREED 


As THE Mass is central in the spiritual life 
of the Catholic Christian, so the Creed is at the 
heart of his intellectual life. Its value to him 
is manifold: it expresses in briefest possible 
terms the essential factors of the Apostolic 
experience; it continues to represent for him in 
succinct form what the Catholic Church be- 
lieves; and this sense of its values is confirmed 
for him by the direct and indirect witness of 
other knowledge ascertained independently of 
revelation. It is by consideration of these func- 
tions that the Creed may be approximately 
understood and appreciated. 


i 


Several periods in the early history of the 
Church were largely occupied, or so it seems in 
such history of them as is available, with doc- 
trinal controversies. But the controversies had 


The Creed 49 


at least the advantage that they led to the 
setting forth some fundamental elements of 
Christian truth in authoritative formulae. And 
it is these credal statements that are required to 
be accepted in the Church as de fide.* There 
have indeed been periods since those relatively 
early times when controversy has arisen afresh 
over the meaning of this or that article of the 
Creed, but it is noteworthy that subsequent dis- 
cussion has not resulted in modifying the orig- 
inal phraseology. It is doubtless also true 
that at times, owing to a variety of causes, 
certain articles of the Creed have received dif- 
ferent emphasis, or in popular teaching been 


*In the following discussion the reference throughout is to the 
Nicene Creed, as being not only the official creed of the Church 
but a far more exact statement than the Apostles’ Creed. The 
oecumenical authority of the Nicene symbol is granted. A_ brief 
examination of several of the phrases of the two formulae will 
readily demonstrate the superiority of the Nicene over the Apostles’ 
Creed in carefulness of statement. Indeed, a reference to the Latin 
forms of the Creeds would remove at a glance certain of the objec- 
tions that ignorance frequently alleges against the faith. For 
example, in the earlier symbol the Father is called creatorem coeli et 
terrae, suggesting at once philosophical problems incapable of solu- 
tion, which are eliminated in the later symbol by changing the 
expression creatorem to factorem coeli et terrae. Likewise the Nicene 
Creed omits the inexplicable phrase Descendit ad inferos. It replaces 
the earlier expression Ascendit ad coelos, suggesting a local, spatial 
heaven, by the more symbolic phrase, Ascendit in coelum. It adds to 
‘the statement of belief in the Holy Spirit, the illuminating quali- 
fications, Dominum et Vivificantem; it replaces the expression credo 
with regard to belief in resurrection and immortality by the more 
significant term expecto; and finally it replaces the carnis Resurrec- 
tionem, so difficult of explanation, by the simpler and more-embracing 
phrase, Resurrectionem mortuorum. 


50 Values of Catholic Faith 


given really different interpretation; but this 
always without affecting the fact that the ac- 
cepted formulae sufficiently express what the 
Catholic Church believes. 

Supreme in importance and unchangeable in 
phraseology though the Church may hold the 
Creed to be, it is not unnecessary to plead that 
definitions in finite terms of infinite concepts 
can be anything but approximate: on the very 
highest ground that they are more than divine- 
ly-guaranteed expressions that enshrine trans- 
cendent truth. At the most it is but possible to 
gaze through the crystal words ‘into the un- 
fathomable depths of the infinite and the eter- 
nal. God can not be “explained.’”’ The most 
naive could not suppose that, even rightly ap- 
prehended, the Creed divests the Godhead of 
mystery. When the pilgrim recalls that his own 
being, the eternity from which he came, the 
eternity into which he goes, the inexplicable 
trinity of body, mind, and spirit that makes up 
his personality, are all veiled in impenetrable 
mystery, it is not to be expected that the Di- 
vine Being may be resolved into a simplicity 
that can be understood as can such concrete 
facts as that 2 plus 2 equals 4, or that the sum 
of the three angles of a triangle equals two 
right angles. Such facts can be proved by prac- 


The Creed 51 


tical experiment. The mysteries of being are ap- 
prehended in no such simple fashion. Every pil- 
grim, every person indeed, is a highly organized 
individuality, possessed of a body obeying all 
the laws of physics and chemistry, of a mind 
with well-nigh infinite complexities of percep- 
tion and judgment, of reason, relation to mat- 
ter, of hopes, fears, passions, aspirations; pos- 
sessed further of an ego that unites all these 
functions and activities into one, the existence of 
which it is necessary to postulate in order to 
conceive of the universe at all. He is never dis- 
associated from these complexities: they are as 
familiar as the air, as mysterious as the wind. 
Reduce them to a formula, submit them to what- 
ever hypothesis or explanation, and the mystery 
but deepens. The more, however, that is known, 
the deeper becomes the intuition that at the 
heart of mystery is truth, and that the end and 
aim of being is to make the self at one with it. 
So the Divine Being must remain veiled in im- 
penetrable mystery; and yet just as from that 
mystery there has flashed into conscious life, the 
beings that we call ourselves, whose desires, 
needs, feeling, thinking, willing, are importu- 
nate and continuous; so from the heart of mys- 
tery there once flashed into our consciousness 
a personality so gracious, so benign, so serene 


52 Values of Catholic Faith 


and lovely and courageous, so afire with beauty 
and with truth, that when he says, as he did 
unmistakably, J came forth from God, with 
Simon Peter of old, the pilgrim in the Way can 
but fall to his knees in adoration, and confess, 
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 
Thou hast the words of truth and life. 

And is not this very much what happened 
in the first age of the Church? There is singu- 
larly little need of the theological faculty in a 
first effort to understand the spontaneous pro- 
cess by which Christian doctrine crystallized 
from the Apostolic experience and was formu- 
lated by the Fathers. There is need rather for 
an ingenuous and lively imagination, that with 
good will can transport itself back into those 
translucent days when Jesus walked the shores 
of Galilee and the hillsides of Judea, that with 
fresh interest can read the evangelical record of 
that springtime of eternity when God visited 
his people and when the fishermen of Genne- 
sareth knew that in companying with the 
Master they were in the way of truth and life. 
At this stage of apprehending what their ex- 
perience actually was, theological learning is 
at a discount, is almost undesirable: it were al- 
together well to dispense with its stereotyped 
phrases, valuable though they be, though they 


The Creed 53 


be the very crystals themselves which are the 
result of the process to be observed. Such fresh 
investigation of the revelation of doctrine must 
ever be worth the effort. 

It is illuminating to observe the factors 
that led to the crystallization of the dogma of 
the Trinity, to analyse the mind of the Church 
working on the data of revelation in this fun- 
damental region. ‘The little band of the disciples 
of Jesus already had intense faith in the Eter- 
nal God behind phenomena, the first cause and 
source of all things, transcendent creator of 
the creation; they believed that he had already 
spoken through prophet, priest, and king; that 
he continually spoke in the course of circum- 
stance and event, particularly in the marvelous 
preservation and guidance of their own people, 
and awesomely in the doom of nations. In 
Jesus they were passionately convinced that 
they were witnesses of the love and mercy, the 
eternal good, the ineffableness, of the Most 
Holy. They loved him with a love deeper and 
more satisfying than any they had known, or 
felt they could ever know. They saw him die 
what, after their first despair, they realized 
was a glorious death, suffered for the sake of 
others, even for. themselves. They beheld him 
risen from the dead, and watched him disappear 


54 Values of Catholic Faith 


into the invisible. He was all that they conceived 
as divine, the embodiment of love, goodness, 
tenderness, strength, beauty; he was all that 
they meant by human, courageous, devoted, 
moved by natural passions, who wept and laugh- 
ed and joyed and sorrowed as they themselves 
did; and yet, unlike themselves, kept himself 
unspotted from the world. 

Thomas expressed their attitude in his 
breathless exclamation, My Lord and My 
God! He was their divine friend; and yet, as 
they knew, he was their brother, born of wo- 
man. In short they could express their experi- 
ence of him in no other way than by asserting 
that he was God and that he was man. They 
confessed with one mouth that they believed 
in God, the Father Almighty; and in Jesus 
Christ, his Son, the Lord, the Word, the 
Image, the Revelation of God, God the Son. 

But there was another element in the situ- 
ation, germane to the process. God the Father 
was invisible; Christ passed into the invisible, 
to reign, as they ardently believed, at God’s 
right hand. But shortly after, according to his 
promise, they felt descend upon them a heav- 
enly influence, the Spirit at once of their Father 
in heaven and of Christ their Friend, a Spirit 
who breathed upon them heavenly grace, who 


The Creed 55 


was to direct and rule their hearts, to guide 
them deeper into truth, to make them more and 
more consciously at one with it. He also, for 
they confused him neither with the Father nor 
with the Son, was God, the Spirit of God and 
of Christ. They had definitely different experi- 
ence of each, of Father, of Son, and of Holy 
Ghost. But it goes without saying that these 
Jewish followers of Jesus had not suddenly 
come to believe in three Gods. Nay, from the 
beginning, they believed and they expressed 
themselves as believing that they had three 
distinct experiences of God,—as Father, God 
the Creator, the source of all things; as Son, 
Jesus Christ, Lord and Leader, the Captain 
of their salvation and friend of their souls, the 
Head also of the body which they themselves 
constituted and called the Church; and as Holy 
Ghost, the divine Spirit, Inspirer, Strengthen- 
er, Comforter, who dwelt in their hearts; who 
was their guide in the way. These three, though 
distinguishable, were yet one. 

Here are the essential elements of the 
doctrine of the Trinity, the data, so to speak, 
upon which the Church—divinely guided as they 
believed, as Catholics always have held—had to 
go in stating for her children in successive gen- 
erations what must be believed about the na- 


56 Values of Catholic Faith 


ture of God; none to be neglected, unrecog- 
nized, disparaged. 

Were the intellectual work of the Catholic 
Church, such as crystallized in the doctrine of 
the Trinity, to be undertaken afresh, and were 
the experience of the Apostolic Christians to 
be recorded anew in technical language for the 
safe-guarding of its vital truth and for its 
transmission to subsequent ages, inevitably the 
result would be the same—just what has been 
handed down by the Church in symbolic form- 
ulae—the exact equivalents of the Creeds. And 
as a matter of fact this assertion would hold, 
whether the hypothesis of divine guidance be | 
true or not. It is difficult to see what other 
dogmatic statements could have been deduced 
from the data in hand—the age-long Jewish 
monotheism, the wonderful companying with 
Jesus and the Apostles’ trust in him and belief 
about him, the vivid experience of Pentecost 
and the power in which henceforth those dis- 
ciples of Jesus worked and preached and bap- 
tized. In like manner a true historic sense and 
an informed imagination might analyse all the 
essential dogmas implied or stated in the 
Creeds, precisely as an exact summary in brief- 
est terms of the Apostolic experience. 

It is often asserted, however, that no the- 


The Creed by 


ory of the Atonement is defined in the Creed. 
But surely the Nicene symbol states the doc- 
trine clearly enough in such phrases as—‘‘Who 
for us men and for our salvation came down 
from heaven,” and “‘And was crucified also for 
us under Pontius Pilate.’ It is again a recon- 
struction of the Apostolic experience that will 
indicate why the Church, though it defined the 
doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, 
refrained from any particular definition of a 
theory of the Atonement. 

That a theory of Christ’s relation to God, 
of the fact and method of his incarnation, was 
inevitable, is indicated by the curiosity and in- 
terest of the Apostles in the Lord’s person 
from the beginning, culminating in Peter’s in- 
spired confession. That Jesus lived and died 
for them was evident; it needed but conviction 
of his messiahship and faith in his divinity to 
invest the thought of Atonement with all its 
infinite implications and its personal applica- 
bleness. Of the love and sympathy and good- 
will and self-sacrifice of Jesus they were as- 
sured; but they needed something more, and 
they received something more. 

In the person of the Son they beheld God 
identifying himself with their struggling hu- 
manity. They saw him tempted; they saw him 


58 Values of Catholic Faith 


die. They were witnesses, moreover, that he 
conquered both sin and death. The Cross 
measured his will to save them; the Resurrec- 
tion proved his power. In the gift of the Spirit 
there was salvation, sanctification, life eternal, 
and by Church and Sacrament this redemptive 
process was extended. In the light of Easter 
morning the Cross became the Tree of glory. 
The gospel news was that what Christ had 
done, they in Christ could do. Bethlehem, Geth- 
semane, Calvary, the garden of Joseph of 
Arimathea, were incidents in a _ continued 
drama of redemption; were all parts of the 
one sacrificing triumph of God for his people; 
all means to the end that Christ’s divinely con- — 
quering life might be made over, literally given 
to his disciples, to the pilgrims in the Way. As 
with suffering humanity Christ had identified 
himself, so with his glorious humanity it was 
made possible for them to identify themselves. 
Faith, prayer, works, worship, communion, sac- 
rifice, are all directed to this supreme end: that 
the pilgrim shall live in the Spirit of Christ, 
know the truth in him, be made free in him, 
share his life, until it will be no more he who 
lives but Christ in him. J live, and yet not I. 
Christ liveth in me! That is the splendid cry of 
triumph uttered by St. Paul, amidst difficulties, 


The Creed 59 


discouragements, and afilictions that made him 
bitterly aware of what Jesus passed through 
on Calvary, and, with the memory warm and 
rich within him of the transcendent vision on 
the Damascus road, made him thrillingly aware 
of something that Jesus passed into on the 
right hand of God. And this is essentially the 
experience of every Apostle: it is this which the 
Creed expresses by the words, “* and was cru- 
cified for us... . He suffered and was buried... 
and on the third day he rose again. .. . and as- 
cended into heaven.” And all this is meant by 
Atonement. To describe it in detail—it is in- 
definable—would be to set forth a treatise in 
dogmatic theology: to state it briefly could not 
be done more succinctly and concisely than in 
the existing creed. 


Zia 


What has been said with reference to the 
Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, 
cardinal doctrines of the Christian creed, is at 
best but suggestive of what the first followers 
of Jesus experienced in their relation to him, 
their effort to explain that experience in in- 
tellectual terms, and their action to carry out 
their conviction of being supernaturally en- 
dowed by his Spirit to carry on his work and 


60 Values of Catholic Fatth 


word. What gradually (by steps often retraced 
in modern days by scholarly investigators ) came 
to be formulated in technical phraseology, was 
simply the inevitable result of recording and 
safeguarding the Apostolic experience. The 
Catholic Church, by every conceivable means 
in her power, though not without prolonged 
discussion and sometimes acrimonious contro- 
versy, gave to these technical formulations of 
belief her imprimatur. 

That the Creeds represent the traditional 
belief of the Church is no longer disputed. 
They have as important a value, however, in 
being the norm to which all subsequent Chris-- 
tian experience has adapted itself; or which, 
failing such accommodation, has demonstrably 
indicated itself as separation from the life that 
is peculiarly and characteristically Christian. 
This may be at least suggestively indicated by 
considering only two of those doctrines that 
have already served to illustrate how the Creed 
originated in the Apostolic experience. 

The burden of modern criticism of the 
Creeds, not avowedly hostile, is the assertion 
that they need to be rewritten in modern terms. 
But what primarily is it that is to be so reéx- 
pressed? The normal Christian experience is 


faith in God, a Father in heaven; faith in God 


The Creed 61 


as revealed in Jesus Christ; faith in God who 
reveals himself, at least makes his influence 
felt, as a Holy Spirit within the soul. And what 
differentiates Christianity from other forms of 
monotheism is primarily belief that Jesus ade- 
quately reveals God, because he is himself di- 
vine. And as a matter of fact, and the point 
need not be laboured anew, if this fundamental 
dogma is accepted, the Nicene theology is its 
logical development. 

- Belief in the divinity of Christ, subjected 
to interrogation, appeals to the Gospel record. 
Therein Jesus Christ appears as the unique 
figure in human history, and he has lost noth- 
ing of vividness and originality in the lapse of 
centuries. What at its highest and deepest the 
pilgrim of today can feel about Christ is there- 
in set forth with artless grace and persuasive 
force. He feels that with the greatest simplic- 
ity, the utmost directness, and from the highest 
possible motives, the Apostolic writers endeav- 
oured to relate what Jesus did, what he said, 
the claims he made for himself, and the im- 
pression he made upon them. Granted the strik- 
ing differences in their style and mode of ex- 
pression, the contradictions in detail, there is 
yet such remarkable unanimity in their report 
of what Christ did and said and in their es- 


62 Values of Catholic Faith 


timate of who Christ was, that their witness 
can only be discredited by, in effect, rejecting 
1. 

Jesus fulfilled the ancient prophecies, he 
met all the requirements laid down by the 
Prophets of old whereby Messiah was to be 
known. He convinced those with whom he 
dwelt in continuous intimacy that he was not 
merely sinless, but that his was an actively and 
positively perfect life. He is the supreme ex- 
ample, the ideal model of conduct and charac- 
ter. Moreover, he demonstrates his power to 
help his followers reproduce conduct and char- 
acter that approximate his. In short, far more | 
than being merely a model to imitate, he is, in 
a mystic but intensely real sense, Life itself. 
And his marvelous assertions, his unique and 
absolute claims made under the imagery of 
figures and analogies, seem the most accurate 
description of what he really is. He is the Vine, 
of which those who are his are the branches. 
He is the Water of Life, of which drinking, 
men shall no more thirst. He is the Light of 
the World, the light that lighteth all who come 
into the world, especially illuminating for those 
who will follow the way to God. He is the 
Door through which alone is there entrance 
into the fold of salvation. He is the Head of a 


The Creed 63 


divine body of which his disciples are members. 
He is the Shepherd of all wandering sheep, the 
seeker and lover of souls, the Light of the 
world, I AM. All such transcendent images 
(and there are many more), far from seeming 
egotistic assertions, as they would seem on the 
part of any other man who ever lived, fall from 
the lips of Jesus as gracious and beautiful 
statements of truth, as words of life, as assur- 
ances, convincing assurances, of his will and 
power to save. [hey are living words that 
inspire faith and draw his followers to him in 
the bands of utterly unselfish, vividly pure, and 
entirely blessed love. 

It is scarcely an additional step in thought 
to acknowledge him as Justification for faith, 
ransom for sin, ground for hope in immor- 
tality. For his sake, in him, souls are forgiven, 
received, justified of God; in truth, saved, re- 
deemed, regenerated, made over, given new 
hearts and new minds. And faith in him in- 
volves to some degree at least a share in his 
purity, his holiness, his happiness, his health. 
Existence itself is conceivable and indeed con- 
ceived as an ever-increasing, vivid, transfigur- 
ing, transforming life in his spirit. And when 
he says, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father,” it seems but the simplest enunciation 


64 Values of Catholic Faith 


of what is simply, though most wonderfully, 
the truth. He is himself a fountain of grace and 
a seat of absolute justice. 

And all this goes along with absolute as- 
surance of his perfect humanity, his sensitive- 
ness to pain and joy, that he could be tempted, 
be moved to laughter and to tears, that indeed 
he could suffer the pains of death. And yet in- 
escapably an absolute belief and a passionate 
conviction forms itself—he is to be adored with 
such adoration as God alone may claim. 

And this experience, this irresistible impres- 
sion of the evangelical record, renews itself 
wherever the Gospel is preached, wherever and 
through all Christian centuries the word of 
Jesus Christ is preached and his claims pre- 
sented. Even in a sophisticated age of doubt, 
such as this, saturated as men are with false 
philosophy and pseudo-science, tainted as they 
are with the malady of the age; yet the words 
of Jesus repeat themselves. ‘Through the power 
of the Spirit he lives. in the imagination and 
the heart. He makes his claims. He utters the 
ineffable words of life. He offers rest, peace, 
forgiveness, happiness. His perfection rebukes 
imperfection. His purity shames selfishness and 
greed. And though his “hard sayings’? seem 
impossible to fulfill; and now and then, for the 


The Creed 65 


moment, he seems remote from the confusion, 
the alarms, the hopes and fears, of these dis- 
tracted days; yet ever and anon, in extraordi- 
nary ways, it is perceived that he is inextricably 
a part of the age; the unique figure in a univer- 
sal movement of man toward God, the witness 
and the pledges of God’s ageless love for men. 
He embodies all that we really conceive as di- 
vine, all of the best that we know as human. 
There is a spell in those pages of the Gospel 
that nothing can destroy; there is beauty in 
them far more solid and untarnishable than in 
anything man has created ... He speaks 
again, it is as the voice of many waters. He 
speaks to the heart, to the mind, to the imagina- 
tion, to the soul clouded by doubt, oppressed by 
difficulty. He speaks in all the experience of 
good and evil. And always that voice is an in- 
vitation, a call—‘‘Come unto me .. .”’ As in 
his name bread is broken and wine poured 
forth, what is called an altar resolves itself 
into a mystic Calvary. It appears that he offers 
an eternal sacrifice in that he laid down his life 
for his friends. His friends share in that sacri- 
fice. Experience after experience opens and re- 
opens heart and mind and will to a risen and 
a living Christ. Difficulties may not be solved, 
but they no longer inhibit. Doubts vanish in the 


66 Values of Catholic Faith 


fullness and gladness of believing. Unworthi- 
ness does not hinder, for men offer themselves, 
not as they are, but as they can be, as they 
might be, as they may be, as they will to be, in 
him. 

Many explanations, demonstrably inade- 
quate, have been offered in vain to account for 
this experience. The pilgrim asks—but re- 
ceives no answer—what other words can bet- 
ter or as well express what he feels and thinks 
and believes about Jesus and the faith he has 
in him, than those which he utters in the thun- 
derous credo of the Universal Church? 


And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the 
only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Fa- 
ther before all worlds, God of God, Light of 
Light, Very God of Very God; Begotten, not 
made; Being of one substance with the Father; 
By whom all things were made; Who for us 
men and for our salvation came down from 
heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
of the Virgin Mary, And was made man. 


And precisely as the words of the Creed ex- 
press for the pilgrim in the Way what he be- 
lieves about Christ, so its phrases express sufh- 
ciently—no words could describe or define all 
that he means—what Christ has done for him. 


The Creed 67 


He can but say, dnd I believe that he “was cru- 
cified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suf- 
fered and was buried; And the third day he 
rose again according to the Scriptures; And as- 
cended into heaven, And sitteth on the right 
hand of the Father.” 

For as the pilgrim looks back upon his own 
spiritual life, so often marred by shortcoming 
and positive sin, what has more and more 
brought him back to God and held him, even 
as he may waywardly pursue a path of fresh 
wrong-doing and renewed repentance, is just 
his faith in God’s righteousness and love re- 
vealed in Christ. Brought back from sin and 
his feeble efforts to justify himself by some such 
judgment as Peter’s—‘To whom else shall we 
go; thou hast the words of eternal life ?’’—he 
rises to the ideal of trying to be like Christ; 
and when oftentimes he finds that ideal hopeless 
of fulfilment, for that which he would he does 
not, and what he would not, that he does, 
he begins to realize that he can not be like 
Christ except it were that he should get Christ’s 
life in him. He begins to appreciate the force 
of St. Paul’s conception, that getting Christ’s 
life in him, means being in Christ. He has loved 
Christ as the beautiful figure that trod the 
‘ways of Galilee and sailed its seas; and he 


68 Values of Catholic Fatth 


learns that it is his own sin that dims his sense 
of comradeship. It was through love for such 
as he—even for him—that Christ gave up his 
life upon the Cross. Death could not conquer 
such love; such love alone could conquer death. 
The Resurrection was the test of Christ’s 
power; Pentecost was its fulfilment. What the 
pilgrim would not do if he could, what he 
could not do if he would, in love and sorrow 
for him so sinning, Christ has done by life 
given for him and life given to him. And so 
with the pilgrim’s thought of the death upon 
the Cross, which convicts and grieves him for 
his weakness and waywardness, his love of soft- © 
ness and of self, there commingles joy that 
by Christ’s rising from the dead there is pos- 
sibility and promise for his union with a Risen 
Lord, no mere feeble imitation of a gracious 
but vanished master. The Atonement effected 
by the Death is perfected by the Resurrection. 
More and more in his pilgrimage he wants to 
be made good, and he is glad that being made 
good means the gradual extinction in him of 
self-centered, self-willed life and the dwelling 
in him more and more of Christ his life. And 
of that indwelling he is continually assured as 
he partakes of the broken bread and the 
poured-out wine, knowing well that Christ has 


The Creed 69 


power to do who said, This is my body broken 
for you, and, This my blood shed for you. The 
Atonement perfected by the Resurrection is 
applied in the sacraments, and by prayer, and 
whenever the heart is uplifted to God, when 
the mind dwells upon the divine mind, and the 
will is bent unto the eternal will. The pilgrim 
knows, as the Apostles knew, that in death en- 
dured and conquered by Christ, there is for 
him redemption, union with God, life immortal 
and eternal. ‘Therefore he can say to his com- 
panions in the Way: We have boldness to enter 
into the holiest, not because we are holy, but 
because he is holy; and we are being made at 
one with him. We enter by a new and living 
Way, by his body broken and his blood shed, 
by his rising to life, and by his giving of life. 
And as he has ascended to the Father, we have 
a great high priest over the house of God. 
Therefore, let us draw near with true hearts 
in the full assurance of faith. 

It is from this assurance of faith, from its 
richness, depth, breadth, heighth, its spiritual 
grace, its saving power, its pledge of immor- 
tality, that the pilgrim, following in the foot- 
steps of the Apostles, has made, has preserved, 
will defend, and must ever hold and continu- 
ally utter the Catholic Creed. 


70 Values of Catholic Fatth 
a) 


It is one of the ironies of life that there 
should so often appear a conflict between re- 
ligion and science. It confirms belief in the 
reality of the Devil, a malignant and powerful 
intelligence who works to set against each 
other in gratuitous and factitious antagonism 
two natural allies in the service of truth. 
Rightly conceived, religion and science can be 
but complementary methods of approach to the 
same goal, different pathways to the same 
reality. It is true that many religionists and 
many scientists have quarrelled, and the result © 
of their quarrels is often to make their de- 
partments of knowledge incompatible or hos- 
tile. Sometimes it is the ignorance of the scien- 
tist, sometimes that of the religionist, that is 
to blame; more often it is due to the fact that 
either or both hold a false philosophy in addi- 
tion to whatever scientific or religious truth 
they have attained. As a matter of fact neither 
science nor religion necessitates any scheme of 
philosophy beyond the inescapable axioms and 
assumptions of common sense. Indeed, both 
are independent of such, and are themselves 
the matter from which the ultimate philosophy 
must be deduced. Science presents no obstacles 


The Creed 71 


to faith nor does faith interfere with the freest 
pursuit of scientific truth. It is the unwarranted 
assumptions of philosophic theory that alike 
impugn the validity of religion and generate 
crude skepticism in the realm of scientific 
knowledge. 

One of the many reasons for which the 
Christian values the Creed as an irreversible 
statement of revealed truth is the involuntary 
witness it is continually receiving at the hands 
of scientists. It is this that makes him increas- 
ingly indifferent to the assertions of philo- 
sophers (who have a strange conceit oftentimes 
of calling themselves historians) that miracles 
do not happen and that the notion of revela- 
tion is incredible. The pilgrim, supported by 
the supernatural grace of the sacraments, goes 
serenely on his way, reiterating the ancient 
formulas of the changeless faith as confidently 
as the scientist depends on the axioms of mathe- 
matics and the inescapable assumptions of com- 
mon sense. 

These remarks may be illustrated by the 
brief examination of one of the fundamental 
problems that confront every thinker about 
life. Perhaps the experiences that most try 
scientist, religionist, and philosopher alike are 
those recurring catastrophic calamities in the 


72 Values of Catholic Faith 


physical order with their attendant human suf- 
fering. It is equally difficult to reconcile such 
phenomena with an orderly evolution toward 
a better world, with a harmonious expansion 
of the idea of the Absolute, or with the exis- 
tence of a just and beneficent God. A satis- 
factory solution of the problem is yet to be 
achieved by any method of thought; but it is 
the Christian, with his faith in a loving, 
Heavenly Father, who finds in the latest 
hypotheses of science indications of what the 
solution will likely prove to be. 

Simple and unreflecting souls are apt to 
see in the untoward manifestations of nature, 
with their thwarting of human effort and their 
crushing of human life, the mysterious but di- 
rect interventions of a divine Providence: the 
very terribleness of them witnesses to almighty 
power and is evidence of inscrutable justice. 
And the Christian pilgrim, who may indeed 
manifest simplicity without at the same time 
being unreflecting, inclines to share that natural 
instinct. It is easier for him to see in the fright- 
ful eruptions of natural or even social forces 
the intervention of God, than it is to absolve 
an hypothetical deity from any connection with 
the untoward events that happen in his uni- 
verse. 


The Creed 73 


He recalls that on an occasion when certain 
persons undertook to nonplus Jesus with this 
very problem, the Master gave what seems at 
first glance to be an equivocal reply, but which 
appears on scrutiny to be a hint toward the 
adequate solution; a hint moreover that now, 
after many centuries have passed, appears to 
receive unlooked-for elucidation from the most 
recent scientific hypothesis ... “I tell you, 
Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish.’ Apparently Jesus would have had 
them understand that, though it was not a ques- 
tion of the degree of sin, it was most emphati- 
cally a question of the fact of sin; that all are 
under a universal condemnation from which 
there is possible escape only by repentance, a 
reversal of standards, a renewal of life, a turn- 
ing toward God; in other words, that evil in 
the universe is directly cause for pain, suftfer- 
ing, disaster, war, earthquake, flood, even the 
crashing of worlds: not evil of individuals, but 
the evil of the race, which is one, which should 
be God’s children, but which is rebellious and 
disobedient. For long time indeed this has 
seemed but dogmatic assertion. It has been 
tolerated by those who for other reasons ac- 
cept the spiritual claims of Jesus Christ, but 
has been assimilated, like many other of his 


74. Values of Catholic Faith 


hard sayings, by few pilgrims in the Way. It 
too often has seemed, even to Christians, to 
be but one of the antiquated series of anthropo- 
morphic ideas that philosophers assert do duty 
for the absence of any true philosophy back of 
the creeds. But modern scientists, though cer- 
tainly with no purpose of relieving the em- 
barrassment of pilgrims, much less of theolo- 
gians, come to the rescue with persuasive and 
increasingly-popular hypotheses. 

Certainly science does afirm an end of the 
world; it has quite exploded the old notion of 
“matter”; it is asserting discontinuity in the 
field of physics, and in so doing disavowing its 
older notion of a purely mechanical process. 
Evolution, therefore, can no longer be taken 
in the sense of a mere unfolding of the im- 
plicit; it confronts us with the idea of a creative 
process; and, though science as such can go no 
further, a creative process involves the constant 
intervention of chance or intelligence. There 
seems, therefore, good reason to believe, as it 
is man’s native disposition to believe, that there 
are two factors in the world-process—‘“‘matter”’ 
and ‘‘mind’’; and if the latter of these is al- 
lowed at all, it must be granted priority both 
in a temporal and qualitative sense—in a 
casual sense. Indeed, partly by experimenta- 


The Creed 75 


tion, partly by mathematical deduction, many 
speculative scientists have gone on gayly sub- 
dividing ‘‘matter’”’ into such infinitely infinites- 
imal quantities that there can be conceived no 
quantities more infinitesimal than those of the 
thought (or the ‘‘mind’’) that conceives them. 
Whether or no, as some have guessed, thought 
is the primordial substance or stuff of which all 
this universe is fashioned; or, as others prefer, 
the creating mind is somehow mysteriously re- 
sponsible, there is predicated a Thinker for 
whom at least God is an adequate name. 
Thought, so far as can be observed, achieves 
its highest expression in the self-consciousness 
of man. Certainly in the state of self-conscious- 
ness it can be dealt with, investigated, reasoned 
about, as nowhere else and under no other con- 
ditions. Thought in man, as it is known by each 
little personal experience as well as by observa- 
tion of the general experience, is impregnated 
with evil, marked by a rebellious tendency and 
will to turn away from goodness, truth, and 
beauty, as well as by a will to struggle toward 
those things. And it is practically general con- 
viction that this evil in thought is something 
alien, something which keeps it from being 
what it should be. That is personal experience 
for practically every rational being. It is race 


76 Values of Catholic Faith 


experience. It is highly probable that it is uni- 
verse experience. It is this alien element of 
rebellious evil in the thought of the universe 
that has as its direct and inevitable consequence 
all that is painful and untoward, all that is dis- 
astrous and destructive, in nature and in man. 
This hypothesis of modern science is the im- 
plication of revealed religion, and it is the in- 
dubitable teaching of Jesus. So stubborn and 
inveterate is this evil in the universe, that to 
Christ’s thought the Incarnation and Atone- 
ment of the Son of God was God’s estimate of 
its power and danger. So stubborn and inveter- 
ate is it that Jesus himself did not assert the 
final triumph of good, nor even predict it until 
this present order had been dissolved in catas- 
trophic ruin. So too, universal catastrophe is 
the prediction of the prophets of modern 
science. 

Indeed, in those discourses about what is 
called “the end of the world,” discourses now 
more generally explained away than credited 
by Christians, Jesus definitely prophesied the 
collapse and destruction of this universe of 
time and space in which evil has done such in- 
calculable damage. But in the terrible warning 
of doom uttered by him there is the note of 
hope, the assurance of a possible and a final 


The Creed 77 


salvation. ‘‘All these,” he said, ‘“‘are the be- 
ginnings of sorrows.” The original Greek for 
the word translated sorrows is od, and lit- 
erally rendered, the phrase would read, “All 
these are the beginnings of birth-pangs.” For 
the word div is everywhere else used to de- 
note the sorrows, the pangs, that come upon a 
woman in travail; that come when she is about 
to bring new life into the world. Sorrow indeed, 
pain indeed: but sorrow and pain that shall 
ultimately be swallowed up in joy. 

In the light of this prophecy, so understood 
(as it must be taken to be correctly under- 
stood) ; in view of Christ’s warning that all 
are in danger of catastrophe from cataclysms 
of nature and cataclysms of the human spirit 
(indeed, they be inextricably intertwined in the 
evolution of the universe) clues may be found 
to a solution of the fundamental problem under 
such cursory examination. There is for encour- 
agement the prediction of ultimate victory, of 
new and eternal life; of what the author of the 
Apocalypse called a new heaven and a new 
earth. 

No more is claimed than that these consid- 
erations indicate the intellectual solution of the 
problem. And an intellectual solution must be 
possible, for it is implied by all the content of 


78 Values of Catholic Faith 


the creeds: the obligation of belief in a just 
and a beneficent Father in Heaven, in a 
Saviour who atones for evil and makes the re- 
deemed at one with God; in a divine Spirit, 
who carries out and applies this atonement to 
souls in this actual, existing, ever-changing 
world. 

On the other hand, it may be asserted, the 
moral and spiritual solution of the problem is 
immediate and inescapable. God’s ways may or 
may not by study be found less mysterious than 
they are to superficial observation: but whether 
or not, there is upon every one, as an individ- | 
ual, and as member of community, nation, race, 
church, the spiritual compulsion and the divine 
command of repentance, of turning Godwards, 
of seeking new life of thought and action, to 
which God calls, to which Jesus persuades, and 
to which the Spirit is ever inwardly seeking to 
compel. 

And after all—of this at any rate the pil- 
grim is convinced—the words of the Saviour 
indicate for him a Way in which his own spirit 
may keep serene; in which his footsteps, though 
they falter, yet shall not fail; following which, 
no catastrophes that happen in nature or in 
society can quench his hope or still his joy. If 
this be true — and for their conviction that it is 


The Creed 79 


true countless pilgrims have suffered unto death 
—is it not more than conceivable, is it not per- 
suasively probable despite intellectual difficul- 
ties that prevent the absolute rationalization 
of faith and hope, that were men as a race to 
adopt this moral and spiritual solution of their 
problem—the following in the Way—they 
might know the fellowship of Jesus’s sufferings 
and the power of his Resurrection? And then, 
can it be doubted that a race morally regener- 
ated and spiritually redeemed would see with 
a clearer vision and know with an uncorrupted 
mind? At any rate, the Catholic Church has no 
doubt in this matter; but utters an everlasting 
Yea. 

Mankind is one. Science, philosophy, reli- 
gion, equally witness this. On any ground, 
therefore, intellectual integrity can not be as- 
sumed while moral instability and _ spiritual 
blindness exist. Given the race as it has been 
and is, a true religion, except it be also a re- 
vealed religion, is inconceivable. The situation 
reduces to this: the followers of Jesus know 
that they are in the way of life, in the way that 
leads to God. ‘This Way was revealed inade- 
quately of old to prophets, most adequately by 
Christ. Its essentials were wrought out by his 
first followers from their experience of him 


80 Values of Catholic Faith 


and of their following after him in the sensible 
power of his Spirit and under the absolute con- 
viction of his authority. To brief statements of 
those essentials they gave their authority and 
claimed the attestation of his Spirit. An unceas- 
ing stream of pilgrims ever since find in those 
statements the norm of their own experience 
and the essence of their belief. That flowing 
stream of pilgrims constitutes a body which 
calls itself the Church. And not even in times 
of ignorance, persecution, corruption, has the 
faith of that body failed; nor has the Church 
by any organ that has ever given expression to 
its faith, given assent to the notion that change 
is possible in, much less repudiation of, any 
article of its ancient and universal creed. 

In view of this the pilgrim does not con- 
ceive that philosophic criticism can urge against 
the creed of the Church anything that will in- 
validate the truth it symbolizes, destroy its 
practical utility for the Christian life, or per- 
suade that change of its phraseology, if con- 
ceivable, is to be desired. The more faithfully 
he follows, the more positively he is convinced. 


if 
The term Symbolism has become current 
in recent years, particularly in connection with 


The Creed SI 


attempts to rationalize religious faith and ex- 
perience. It has been largely appropriated by 
those who seem to desire to retain Catholic 
values while apparently they deny the histor- 
icity of the events with which those values are 
traditionally and logically associated. It is, for 
example, frequently alleged that since the Creed 
is a symbol and its phrases symbolical, the ex- 
pression about Christ sitting on the right hand 
of God is a triumphant demonstration that the 
language of the Creed can not be literally inter- 
preted. It is alleged that the sort of interpreta- 
tion necessarily given to this phrase may be 
applied to any other article. Moreover, it is 
often argued that this freedom of interpreta- 
tion absolves the Christian from holding 
Christ’s birth of a virgin to be a literal fact any 
more than can be his literal session on the right 
hand of God. The arguments for and against 
such freedom of interpretation are familiar, 
since they have been the principal matter of 
theological controversy in recent times, and 
need not be rehearsed. But the problem is more 
subtle than is commonly assumed, and con- 
troversialists on the one hand and on the other 
have not been particularly happy in express- 
ing the ends in view. Little as particular points 
of iconoclastic criticism may be accepted, little 


82 Values of Catholic Faith 


as what purports to be results of reconstructive 
statement may be adopted, it is impossible not 
to feel (and it is a matter of feeling largely) 
that the purpose behind this demand for free- 
dom of interpretation is a sincere effort to ar- 
rive at the reality of which symbols obviously 
are but the expression. 

Symbols, if they mean anything, are the 
signs and representations of something real; 
the Creed, therefore, to any one who claims 
to be a Christian, is the great symbolical state- 
ment of the revelation of God in and through 
Jesus Christ. The Creed attempts (succeeds, 
shall it not be said?) in asserting the unique 
relation of Jesus to God as Son and his unique 
relation to men as Saviour. The Catholic must 
realize that even the definitions of the Athana- 
sian Creed only safeguard, and do not explain, 
Jesus’s unique Sonship; just as the most pro- 
found experience of mystical union with God 
through Christ, though it brings passionate 
conviction and ardent faith, in no degree dimin- 
ishes from the mystery of salvation. What 
emerges from all Chrisitan thought and experi- 
ence, orthodox and other, is that Christ has the 
value of God. About that central fact there is 
really little dispute: where that ceases to be the 
case, the thinker ceases to be Christian. The 


The Creed 83 


Creeds do no more than assert that as fact, in 
technical terms that safeguard against misinter- 
pretation. It is not conceivable on Catholic 
principles that the Church will repeal articles 
of the Creed or reject any technical expressions 
that have found their way into it; but it should 
not seem improbable, even to a Catholic, that 
study, prayer, speculation, may much more 
deeply illumine the statements of the Creeds; 
draw the Christian infinitely nearer the reality 
of which they are the symbol. Freedom of in- 
terpretation can not touch this reality; whereas, 
the effort to discipline and restrict thought, as 
has sometimes happened in the Church, may 
hamper and even thwart apprehension of that 
reality. It is only through freedom of specula- 
tion, in the last resort inspired by the Spirit, 
that deeper and deeper truths of religion may 
emerge into consciousness. In so far as modern 
criticism has been a mere effort to return for 
its religious faith and experience to what Jesus 
did and said in Galilee and Jerusalem nineteen 
hundred years ago it is demonstrably futile. 
The effort of more recent criticism, for which 
the Catholic should have patient sympathy 
however little he may share its arguments or 
conclusions, is surely to ascertain not only what 
Jesus was in his earthly ministry, but what he 


84. Values of Catholic Fatth 


is in the counsels of the Eternal, what he is in 
the age-long experience of the Church. Cathol- 
icism is often considered, and in its popular 
manifestations too often appears, a static re- 
ligion; whereas, in truth, it is dynamic. Ideally 
it is destined to embrace all truth and all wis- 
dom. For itself it is the universal symbol of 
reality in this sacramental universe, the exten- 
sion of the Incarnation in the world, the reve- 
lation of God and of man in Jesus Christ, the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life. It need not fear, 
therefore, the freest interpretation. For after 
all, what now by general consent constitutes the 
Catholic religion, has been worked out, under 
divine guidance doubtless, from the free 
thought of Christians interpreting, speculating 
upon, meditating upon their experience of a 
unique person. The truth, Jesus said, should 
make his followers free. Surely, therefore, it is 
only in an atmosphere of freedom that truth 
can emerge, persist, persuade. And that is a 
circumstance which, if more generally accepted, 
would have made church history a far more 
edifying record. That the Catholic Church, in 
the name of discipline, should be intolerant 
(however definitely it may affirm, and however 
authoritatively it should teach), is to destroy 
one of its chief values as a way to God. 


The Creed 85 


It is one of those strange paradoxes so 
often apparent in Christian thought and ex- 
perience that the freedom demanded in the 
name of symbolism has been most fully achieved 
by those who, thanks to some particular 
grace or some native character, appear most 
indifferent to the symbols of the faith. It is not 
necessarily, the fact, though that is their own 
conviction, that mystics attain to deeper reality, 
but there is a quality of immediacy about their 
experience that makes it distinctive. What is 
characteristic of all genuine Christian experi- 
ence, whether it be in the nature of mysticism, 
in a practical imitation of Christ, or along the 
lines of traditional Catholic symbolism, is that 
to the pilgrim it is the pathway to reality. 


IV. 
THE DIVINE OFFICE 


if 


TuHoucH for the Catholic Christian the 
Mass is the complete and perfect form of 
prayer, yet since the Eucharist is the occasion 
primarily of worship, sacrifice, and communion, 
it is convenient to consider prayer independent- 
ly of the Mass, and particularly as it is given 
expression in the Divine Office, which the 
Church so beautifully has called “the work of 
prayer,” and which she lays upon those definite- 
ly vowed to her service as a daily obligation. * 

There are various forms of the Divine 


Office authorized in the Church, and though 


1 The failure of many of the Anglican clergy to realize their 
priesthood, as is often justly charged against them, may well be due 
in part to the extent to which many of them neglect this obligation 
of the daily recitation of the offices. It is a duty recognized, if not 
always observed, by the clergy of the English Church, but hardly 
even generally recognized by Anglican priests in America. Surely 
this is an instance of the discipline of the mother Church of England, 
from which her American daughter did not intend to depart. 


The Divine Office 87 


indeed all follow certain general outlines, the 
variety so characteristic of the different com- 
munions may not be ignored as seemed possible 
in the case of the different liturgies. ° 

In considering the Divine Office it is de- 
sirable to bear in mind what is the fundamental 
and primary purpose of prayer. If the Pater 
Noster is taken for the model of prayer, as 
certainly it seemed the Lord’s intention it 
should be taken, it would appear impossible to 
misunderstand that its purpose is to train the 
soul in the will of God; and the soul should be 
understood as embracing the mind, the affec- 
tions, and the imagination. Prayer, in the 
model provided by the Saviour, is the recogni- 
tion, not only on the part of the individual 
but by the brotherhood, by the band of pilgrims 
in the Way, of the holiness of the divine will, 
of the blessedness of fulfilling it, of the glory 
of finding in that fulfilment the realization of 
the Kingdom. To this fundamental conception 
every form of prayer is both subordinate and 
complementary; and of it certainly the Divine 
Office is the richest expression, for it, indeed, 
embraces or implies practically every form of 





? That is to say it is impossible to consider Matins and Evensong 
of the Prayer Book as translations, or even as mere variants, of 
the old hours. They are in effect new services. 


88 Values of Catholic Faith 


prayer. When the purpose of prayer is so ap- 
prehended the objections sometimes urged or 
the difficulties alleged are simply without point. 
Indeed, there is but one form of prayer that 
presents any theoretical difficulty whatever, 
and this difficulty disappears upon reflection. 
Though there is no more instinctive prayer 
than that for others—prayer particularly to 
avert from a loved one some danger or dis- 
tress—yet it is sometimes questioned, if the 
purpose of prayer be the training and conform- 
ing of souls to the divine will, how such peti- 
tions may be justified. It is argued that since 
the danger and the distress must be according 
to God’s will, it is unreasonable and useless to 
suggest to God what may be, what apparently 
is, contrary to his will. But there is a deeper 
conception, and it would seem to be the true 
one, otherwise such prayer could scarcely be so 
universally instinctive. May it not be that the 
divine will can only be fulfilled in conjunction 
with and through such intercessory prayer? 
May not the divine will embrace at once, and 
embrace as one, the objective good desired for 
the beloved and the subjective willing of that 
good expressed in the prayer of the lover? If 
personalities are, as they seem, indissolubly in- 
terdependent, if destinies are inextricably inter- 


The Divine Office 89 


twined, it would seem that they must be con- 
ceived as interdependent and intertwined by the 
divine will and to the divine mind. This would 
also appear to afford the explanation why so 
many of the difficulties that are the result of 
personal relationships find their solution in 
prayer. Intercession certainly may provide the 
necessary opening for the influence of the di- 
vine Spirit. It is, therefore, not only rational 
but vital. 


2. 
The Divine Office is the Church’s most 


carefully ordered system of daily prayer—in- 
deed, of prayer seven times a day, to the en- 
richment of which has gone all the centuries of 
Christian devotion, as well as of what Chris- 
tians took over and illumined from the ancient 
Israel. Moreover, it is prayer expressive of the 
mind of the whole Church; and it is continually 
offered throughout the Church in choir and by 
individuals both voluntarily and of obligation. 

The device which, more than anything else, 
has contributed to the Divine Office so much of 
rich variety, of imaginative beauty, and of 
dramatic appeal, is the Christian Year. It orig- 
inated in the spontaneous instinct of the 
Christians to commemorate the Saviour as a 


90 Values of Catholic Faith 


risen and a living Lord and their own beloved 
passed beyond the veil as alive in him. It first 
found expression in the Liturgy, but it was 
early applied to those offices of prayer that 
succeeded the ritual of Temple and synagogue, 
which, like them, was constructed about the 
Hebrew Psalter. As time went on it became a 
complete kalendar, having, on the analogy of 
the civil year, its seasons, its holydays, its fast 
days, and its ferias. Each generation of pil- 
grims made their own contribution, each group 
of pilgrims indeed; for the Christian Year 
varied in different parts of the Church, and a 
strictly universal kalendar was never suggested 
until the triumphant Papacy, with its passion ~ 
for uniformity and its interest in replacing lo- 
cal usages by Roman, attempted to impose one, 
without, however, conspicuous success. But 
even so highly organized a regulative body as 
the Congregation of Rites failed to prevent 
the overloading of the kalendar by the diverse 
sections of Christendom persistent in the com- 
memoration of local saints and heroes. Reform 
was deemed desirable in the middle age, and 
is still patiently pursued by the Roman Church. 
In the Sixteenth Century the break with Rome 
afforded the fathers of the English Reforma- 
tion opportunity for drastic revision, of which 


The Divine Office 9! 


they took the fullest advantage. Despite sub- 
sequent efforts to modify their radical revision, 
much yet remains to be remedied. 

But, according to whatever kalendar in use 
in the Church, to any one who attempts to fol- 
low the changing seasons of the Christian 
Year, with their alternating days of feast and 
fast, their commemorations of the chief events 
of the Master’s life and of the lives of his 
greatest followers (as the clergy must do in 
the very routine of their office), the admiration 
deepens for the wisdom and the appreciation 
of beauty that devised this scheme as an aid to 
the practice of the spiritual life. Year by year 
we follow the Saviour’s earthly ministry and 
hear all his essential teaching. Every year the 
great mysteries of faith are brought afresh 
to our contemplation, and as from time to time 
we commemorate the Blessed Virgin Mother, 
the Apostles, the Prophets and Evangelists, 
the Martyrs and Confessors, heroic leaders 
and holy women, and the ministering and 
guardian angels, more and more our worship 
and our practice unite themselves with that of 
“the whole company of heaven’”’; the veil that 
divides the visible from the invisible world as- 
sumes, as it were, a certain transparency of tex- 
ture; the distinction between the Church tri- 


92 Values of Catholic Faith 


umphant above and militant here in earth be- 
comes less sharp, and we realize more sensibly 
the comforting truth expressed in the familiar 
hymn: 


“Q blest communion, fellowship divine! 
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; 
Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine. 


“Alleluia.” 


It is precisely this truth to which witness 
is borne by one of the last festivals of the 
Christian Year when All Saints are gathered 
under one commemoration. 

The considerations that apply to this partic- 
ular festival are germane also, in part at least, 
to most other days that commemorate those 
pilgrims in the Way preéminent for heroism 
and for sanctity; and the setting forth of these 
considerations once for all should suffice to es- 
tablish the value of all such holydays. 

The spirit of the delicate skill that devised 
the Christian Year is nowhere more evident 
than in putting All Saints’ Day on the kalendar 
just where it is, toward the end, but not at the 
very end, of the Church year; in that mellow 
and lovely season when the fruits of the earth 
have been harvested and stored in barns; and 
when, though the trees are bare or such ver- 


The Divine Office 93 


dure as still clings to them has fallen into the 
sear and yellow leaf, all their recent splendour 
is still fresh to mind; and when so often after 
the first touch of frost there comes a revived 
and caressing warmth, a peculiarly gracious 
time which is called Indian summer; which the 
English of the middle age, more familiar with 
certain aspects of Christian life, poetically and 
perhaps more appropriately termed the Little 
Summer of All Saints. 

It was indeed insight into the fitness of 
things that fixed the commemoration of all the 
saints at this season. The stored barns suggest 
the grace stored up in righteous character; the 
gauntness, straightness, bareness of the natural 
world suggest the strength of which the saints 
are possessed, of which pilgrims also should be 
possessed against the wintry storms of experi- 
ence; and yet the sweetness of the air, the 
lingering here and there of lovely bloom and 
the veiling of all the landscape in golden or 
silvery mist, softens harshness, recalls the re- 
cent brilliant beauty, and assures us of splen- 
dours and glories that yet shall be. 

It should be worth while to make some 
new estimate of the value of the observance of 
this season; for the perception of values deep- 
ens appreciation. It is evident that one of the 


94. Values of Catholic Fatth 


readiest and soundest means of inculcating pa- 
triotism and of generating good citizenship in a 
people is to make them familiar with the lives 
and teachings uf the national heroes. This is 
done by setting aside their birthdays as holi- 
days; by holding commemorative exercises in 
schools and town halls, when their virtues are 
extolled in the fervid eloquence of village or- 
ators, passages of their own works are read— 
how familiar has Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech 
become through just such repetition!—and 
popular songs are rendered, recalling their ex- 
ploits or their principles. Their birthplaces are. 
set aside as shrines for patriotic pilgrims, as 
has been done so perfectly at Mount Vernon; 
and the best artists are called upon to design 
for their tombs monuments that shall appro- 
priately express the spirit of their endeavour. 
Their personalities are the theme of history, of 
literature, of drama, and most frequently of 
song. 

If these efforts are successful in civic life, 
it is worth while to realize that they are used 
with like success by the Church for the purpose 
of stimulating loyalty and developing good 
Churchmanship. Just as to strip a consciousness 
of all acquaintance with national heroes is to 
rob it of one of its greatest civic inheritances, 


The Divine Office 95 


so to eliminate the saints from worship and de- 
votion is to deprive Christians of a precious re- 
ligious heritage. If at one time this sort of 
religious observance was over-emphasized to 
the point of thrusting out things more funda- 
mental and vital, a like danger need not be 
feared in this unidealistic, rebellious age. The 
zeal of the American Fathers for the saints to 
whom reference is made in Holy Scripture was 
greater than their sense of proportion. They 
pruned even the already well-pruned English 
kalendar with a vengeance. It might well be 
doubted if the cultural, historical, religious 
value of a commemoration of St. Bartholo- 
mew, Apostle though he were, equals that of a 
commemoration of St. Bernard, St. Anselm, 
St. George, St. Benedict, or St. Columba. The 
history of Christianity did not end with the 
closing of the New Testament canon: there are 
other periods of Christian development as in- 
teresting, as appealing, as rich with suggestion 
and example. The Reformation did not inter- 
rupt continuity with the Church of the earlier 
centuries, though it did so much to deaden and 
dull realization of that continuity. It would be 
a great gain to be given the opportunity of 
setting forth the golden deeds of Christian 
leaders, exemplars of strong and beautiful life, 


96 Values of Catholic Fatth 


in other periods of the Church’s history than 
just the Apostolic. Reverence for Lincoln will 
never displace Washington in the admiration 
of Americans; nor need reverence for St. Peter 
and St. John and St. Paul shut out knowledge 
of and regard for St. Augustine, for St. Fran- 
cis, or for such a very modern saint as John 
Keble, who set to music so much of the gra- 
cious teaching of the Christian Year. It is a 
late notion that canonization can only be effect- 
ed by the Pope. The greater saints were canon- 
ized by the spontaneous devotion and admira- 
tion of the people. If for no other reason than 
as insistence on the right of the Anglican Com- 
munion to canonize her heroes, it is to be re- 
gretted the name of King Charles the Martyr 
no longer finds a place on the English kalendar. 
The pilgrims in the Way have need of the 
saints, not alone for their prayers in heaven, 
not alone as examples of varied types of Chris- 
tian character, but for the encouragement of 
their own loyalty to the faith, and for the 
deepening and broadening of their most 
modern Churchmanship. 

Again, All Saints’ Day is a direct means for 
stimulating the religious imagination. It is only 
as a knowledge of the splendid variety of 
Christian character is obtained that there can 


The Divine Office 97 


be an adequate understanding of essential 
Christian personality, that is to say, of the 
Christ himself. A chief value of the saints is 
to see in them the reflection of the Saviour’s 
image, despite all the superficial differences of 
age, time, temperament, and circumstance. 
Each of them is, as it were, a mosaic, admir- 
able in itself, but chiefly admirable because it 
contributes to the perfection of the entire pic- 
ture. An old writer has said that the soul is 
dyed the colour of its thoughts. The colour of 
the soul of much modern religion therefore 
must be drab and grey, for its thought is so 
often prosaic, humdrum, colourless, stupidly 
respectable, decently dull. It lacks imagination. 
It needs colour, light, beauty, poetry, music, 
the thrill of adventure, the charm of romance. 
No device the Church has used is more adapted 
to produce this than the commemoration of the 
saints. 

And since All Saints’ Day—or more partic- 
ularly the first day of its octave, All Souls’— 
includes the commemoration not only of the 
heroic, but of the more personally beloved 
dead, its observance is a direct means of deep- 
ening that filial piety, that love of family, of 
home, of friends, so always necessary and so 
often wanting. It conduces to the realization 


98 Values of Catholic Faith 


that to those who have faith in the Risen Christ 
separation is brief and reunion everlasting. 

To know the strengths and beauties of the 
saints is to admire, to reverence, to imitate; it 
deepens all human sympathies and helps to 
that true discernment of the hidden qualities 
of souls which was so divine a characteristic of 
the Christ. Perhaps more often than is realized 
the whole duty of a Christian might be 
summed up thus—to recognize, to appreciate, 
to aspire. 


“¥ 

In connection with the Christian Year the 
meditative mind loves to linger in contempla- 
tion upon those festivals dedicated to the 
Blessed Virgin Mary—her Conception, her 
Nativity, her Mother and her Spouse, the An- 
nunciation, the Visitation to her cousin Elisa- 
beth, the Purification, her falling asleep, for 
all of which liturgical skill has devised such 
beautiful offices. It is to be regretted that in 
the English kalendar the most of these feasts 
are marked only as minor or black letter days, 
and that in the American all but two are want- 
ing. If there was exaggeration in the devotion 
to the Madonna in the middle age, the minimi- 
zation of such devotion since the Reformation 


The Divine Office 99 


is to the non-Roman Catholic the most serious 
blemish in his Christian Year. 

The picture of the lowly maiden of Naza- 
reth, kneeling, as the pencils of Christian artists 
have so tenderly depicted her, amongst her 
lilies, with the sweet wonder upon her face as 
she listens to the angelic salutation proclaim- 
ing her forever blessed among women, has 
captivated the imagination of mankind and 
awakened faith often when more solid reasons 
fail to appeal. The fairest lines, the most ex- 
quisite colours, the loveliest tones, have gone 
to the pictorial representation of the Virgin’s 
life; indeed, almost without exception, the 
greatest artists have fulfilled their dream of 
beauty in the imaginative presentation of the 
face of the Madonna, that glorious lady who 
of all the saints most warms the heart and up- 
lifts the pilgrim spirit. Some of the sweetest 
strains of poetry have been sung with Mary as 
the theme, from the rhythmic gladness of St. 
Luke’s Gospel of the Nativity to the rich 
medieval Latin of the Ave Stella Maris, from 
the restrained devotion of the old Teutonic 
Leistenteit to the tender syllables of Keble and 
the purest metres of Rosetti. The hymns for St. 
Mary are the finest of the old office books; 
and composers, ancient and modern, from Pal- 


100 Values of Catholic Faith 


estrina to Gounod, have set them to melodious 
harmonies. 

In Holy Writ Mary appears as the pure 
and lovely Virgin, meekly obedient to the heav- 
enly vision, submitting herself in all humility to 
the divine miracle to be wrought in her; then, 
as the loving Mother with the Christ Child in 
her arms. A few glimpses there are of her 
watchful mother-love—at the Temple in 
Jerusalem for the solemn presentation of the 
first-born and her own ceremonial purification, 
according to old Hebrew custom; when, meet- 
ing with the aged Simeon, she let him take the 
child in his arms and heard him utter his 
Nunc dimittis; again at a later date on a 
journey back from keeping the Passover in the 
Holy City when, missing her boy, she finds 
him in the Temple courts, in his Father’s 
house. She was at the wedding-feast in Cana 
of Galilee, when Jesus sanctified innocent so- 
cial festivities by his presence; and once again 
when she called to him from the midst of a 
crowd that pressed about him; and he who men 
knew so deeply loved his mother, proved his 
love for men by calling them his mother. And 
finally she is seen at the foot of the Cross, the 
sword piercing her own soul also; faithful to 
the last, tenderly commended by the Saviour 


The Divine Office IOI 


to the care of the beloved John. Then the veil 
descends. She is seen no more. 

Tradition supposes her to have dwelt 
amongst the group of early Christians in the 
household of St. John, and later to have ac- 
companied him to Ephesus when that city be- 
came his Apostolic see. It is believed that it 
was she who furnished St. Luke with the de- 
tails of the Gospel of the Nativity. The ancient 
Church celebrated her falling asleep at some 
unknown time and place. So it is a natural won- 
der that would know more what manner of life 
was that of the Mother of Christ after the 
Beloved Disciple took her to his own home, 
but it must be left to inference what hopes, 
what privileges of vision, what consolations of 
the spirit, were hers in that hidden sanctuary. 
In the middle age pious souls came to believe 
that she had been assumed into heaven. It is 
not strange that the imagination of the faithful 
should reverently have enquired into the cir- 
cumstances of the falling into her last sleep of 
the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, since all authen- 
tic records of that event have perished, should 
have conceived the beautiful idea of her As- 
sumption. It requires no effort to believe in the 
ineffable purity of the Mother of Jesus; it is 
not difficult to suppose that angels bore the 


102 Values of Catholic Faith 


Queen of Saints to the courts of heaven. There 
must be trust that now in heaven her prayers 
avail the pilgrim in the Way, as once her hum- 
ble obedience and willing consecration did so 
greatly avail to forward the redemption of his 
soul. 

The safest and surest measure of devotion 
to the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Angelic 
salutation that hailed her blessed, and that 
spontaneous hymn to which on the occasion of 
her visit to Elisabeth she herself gave utter- 
ance. In the old antiphonaries, amongst the 
earliest service books extant, the Magnificat 
was called the Evangelium Mariae (the Gospel 
of Mary), and justly so, for it is indeed full 
of gladness and exultation. In the early brevi- 
aries it was assigned to Vespers, on the infer- 
ence that it was toward evening when Mary 
reached the home of Zacharias and Elisabeth. 
Thence it passed into the Evensong of the 
Book of Common Prayer, where it constitutes 
the heart of the service, accenting all the office 
with its sweet devotion, as of a prayer especial- 
ly sacred, as of a canticle of particular em- 
inence, as of an offering of unwontedly fra- 
grant incense. [he Magnificat is steeped in the 
language and sentiment of Old Testament de- 
votion; and has an intimate relation to the 


The Divine Office 103 


Song of Hannah, which was uttered on a not 
dissimilar occasion; thus indicating that the 
Blessed Virgin was one of that pious circle who 
waited for the consolation of Israel, and was 
familiar with Israel’s deepest longings and as- 
pirations, particularly as they found expression 
in poetry and prophecy. It combines with sim- 
ple, and therefore truthful, art the personal 
devotion of Mary’s heart to God and her deep 
sense of her people’s religious hopes and needs. 
“My soul hath magnified the Lord..... for he 
hath visited and redeemed his people.” It is in 
virtue of this weaving together of the essential 
elements of prayer that it becomes so perfect a 
medium of devotion. There is first expressed 
the spontaneous giving of the heart to God, 
and the rejoicing in the happiness that is the 
result of such free giving. Such surrender is 
the beginning of all true mystical experience— 
the deep sense of communion with God to 
whom the heart is given; the peace and rest- 
fulness that succeed the disquiet and restless- 
ness of unspiritual life. As St. Augustine later 
expressed it: “Thou hast made us for thyself, 
O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest 
in thee. Save when it is riveted upon thee, my 
soul is riveted upon vanity, yea, though it be 
riveted upon things beautiful.”’ 


104. Values of Catholic Faith 


And then in the second place there is in the 
Magnificat, as in all pure devotion, the growing 
sense and consciousness that the sweetness and 
good that cometh of union with God, is a sweet- 
ness and good to be shared with others, until 
the overweening sense of God's presence in 
the soul merges with the consciousness of God 
amongst his people, of Israel visited and up- 
lifted, of Zion redeemed. The consecration of 
the heart to God begets a catholic charity: to 
love God is to love the brethren, the fellow 
pilgrims in the Way. 


“Ave Maria! blessed Maid! 
Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade, 
Who can express the love 
That nurtured thee so pure and sweet, 
Making thy heart a shelter meet 
For Jesus’ holy Dove? 


“Ave Maria! Mother blest, 

To whom, caressing and caress’d, 
Clings the Eternal Child; 

Favour’d beyond Archangels’ dream, 

When first on thee with tenderest gleam 
Thy new-born Saviour smil’d:— 


““Ave Maria! thou whose name 
All but adoring love may claim, 
Yet may we reach thy shrine; 


The Divine Office 105 


For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows 
To crown all lowly, lofty brows 
With love and joy like thine.” 


If so much may (and can less?) be justly 
said of the Madonna, Catholics who have re- 
vised the Divine Office of the middle age surely 
owe a duty of reparation to secure in the offices 
they accept a fuller recognition of the part that 
Mary plays in the great drama of Redemption. 


4. 

It is not difficult to discern the reasons that 
determined the difference between the old and 
the reformed offices for feasts of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary; but, in spite of those reasons, 
the actual course adopted was in direct conflict 
with one of the fundamental principles of the 
revision. Those principles would seem to be 
the translation of the old offices into the ver- 
nacular, the combination of the seven hours 
into two, the adaptation of them for use by the 
people, and finally a more extended use in them 
of Holy Scripture. Much indeed is to be said 
for and against the translation from the Latin 
into the English; but, considering the wider use 
to which the revised offices were to be put, that 
decision was perhaps inevitable. It is not nec- 
essary to argue the wisdom, or the lack of it, 


106 Values of Catholic Faith 


that dictated the two instead of the seven 
offices; though it must be urged that the two 
were no more designed to surplant the Mass 
as the normal form of worship than the seven 
had been. But in view of the appeal to Holy 
Scripture, the obscuration of the commemora- 
tion of the Blessed Virgin is indefensible. 

In view of the fact that this appeal to 
Scripture underlies so much of the Anglican 
Reformation in its doctrine, practice, and wor- 
ship, and since it is in the Divine Office (with 
the exception of the unfortunate neglect of the 


Blessed Virgin in the revised kalendar) that 


this principle receives its most obvious applica- 
tion, some consideration of its merits is not 
inappropriate. 

The degree of the change may be briefly 
indicated. In the old breviaries the offices were 
built about the Psalter, on the theory that in 
the course of each week the psalms would be 
read through at least once. But owing to the 
overloading of the kalendar in the medieval 
age with a great variety of feast days, it result- 
ed that the ferial office was seldom, if ever, 
actually said. For it will be recalled that feasts 
have their proper psalms, with the result that 
certain psalms (the 110th is a conspicuous ex- 
ample) were said over and over, and those, 


en 


= 


The Divine Office 107 


as it happens, by no means always of the great- 
est devotional value. To obviate this grave de- 
fect, which the modern Roman Psalter has at- 
tempted to deal with, though less radically and 
with less success, Matins and Evensong were 
built about the Psalter on the theory that the 
psalms would be said through in the course of 
each month, and this was practically accom- 
plished. 

Doubtless one of the reasons for practically 
disregarding the lesser hours in the revision 
was the great similarity and the deadening in- 
flexibility of those offices; for the old breviaries 
necessitated every day reading through in those 
hours of Psalm 119, of which the monotonous 
repetitions do not render it the most edifying. 
It is only within the present generation that the 
Roman Psalter has removed this great blemish, 
which made its lesser hours of such dubious 
value. At any rate the compilers of the Prayer 
Book eliminated Terce, Sext, and None; but 
whether or not that is to be regretted, it is 
dificult to understand their motives for elim- 
inating Compline. The American bishops in 
their Book of Offices have made a graceful 
gesture in the way of restoring Compline to 
Anglican usage, though they have not succeed- 
ed in devising an office that many would will- 


108 Values of Catholic Faith 


ingly see incorporated in the Book of Common 
Prayer. It may be noted parenthetically that 
Anglican communities, in their desire to revive 
the more ancient usage, have fallen back upon 
translations and adaptations of the old breviar- 
ies, none of which however is likely to be- 
come widely used. 

The varied number of short Lessons pro- 
vided in the old night office of Matins and the 
Short Chapter (a verse or two) in the other 
offices gave place both in Morning and Even- 
ing Prayer to two much longer Lessons, one. 
from the Old and the other from the New 
Testament. These lessons, instead of being 
fixed as in the breviaries, were selected accord- 
ing to a Lectionary, which has grown more flex- 
ible and varied with every revision of the 
Prayer Book, so arranged that in the course of 
every year a great portion of the Old Testa- 
ment, certainly the more edifying and inspiring 
portion, and practically all of the New Testa- 
ment, is read through. Moreover the Canticles 
appointed to be read in the service are all taken 
from the Bible. The result is that Morning 
and Evening Prayer, with the exception of the 
Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, Te 
Deum and the Prayers, are entirely in the 
words of Holy Scripture. 


The Divine Office 109 


This more extended, systematic, and in- 
structive use of Scripture in the Divine Office 
is the usual and sufficient Anglican defense of 
the revision made in the Book of Common 
Prayer. The larger use of Scripture is an addi- 
tional argument for the translation into Eng- 
lish, as it provides the opportunity for 
thorough familiarization with the incompara- 
ble King James version of the Bible. 


iy 

In the affection of many who daily recite 
the Breviary, or who at least are familiar with 
its offices, Compline holds the first place. And 
since it is not only one of the most nearly per- 
fect but also one of the shortest of the offices, 
a more particular comment upon it will illus- 
trate the value the Divine Office must have for 
all pilgrims faithful in the prayer of the 
Church. * 

It is supposed by some liturgiologists that 
Compline (Complin, Completorum), the com- 
pletion or ending of all the Hours of the day, 


cx 

® Nothing could be more welcome to many than the incorporation 
of an adequate version of Compline in the Book of Common Prayer. 
Oddly enough, Compline is the only point in the modern revision 
of the Roman Psalter that is not an improvement. It must seem 
loss rather than gain to give up the fixed psalms, endeared by 
long association and so peculiarly appropriate to the office, for the 
varied psalms now authorized by the Congregation of Rites. 


I10 Values of Catholic Faith 


was first arranged for the Breviary by St. 
Benedict; by others it is ascribed to St. Basil, 
since there are references in the ancient writ- 
ings to another “‘hour of prayer’ after Ves- 
pers; by a few even it is traced to St. Pach- 
omius and the early monasteries of Egypt. 
Probably in some form it was used by them all; 
what is certain is that St. Benedict is responsi- 
ble for the version that still (with immaterial 
additions) finds place in the Roman Breviary, 
Jube domne benedicere. 

Compline is normally said at the close of. 
day, in religious houses before the Great 
Silence, by individuals before retiring for the 
night; and it is consistent with the spirit of the 
office that silence should thereafter be observed. 
It begins, appropriately enough, by the 
invocation of a blessing upon the night’s re- 
pose. [he blessing is asked of God, not of right 
but of grace; for restful refreshing sleep, un- 
disturbed by evil thoughts or dreams and out- 
ward dangers; such a rest as foreshadows the 
peaceful end desired by the pilgrim soul “‘in 
the communion of the Catholic Church, in the 
confidence of a reasonable, religious, and holy 
hope, in favour. . . . with God, and in perfect 
charity with the world.” 

Sobrii estote, et vigilate: quia adversarius 


The Divine Office III 


vester diabolus tanquam leo rugiens circuit, 
quaerens quem devoret, cui resistite fortes in 
fide. 

In the old Benedictine monasteries the 
evening devotions included a short period of 
spiritual reading—Holy Scripture or other. 
Compline preserves the relic of this in the 
Short Lesson (I St. Peter, v. 8), the purpose 
of which is to suggest the theme for medita- 
tion. The pilgrim soul is to be sober and vigi- 
lant; for though he may cast his care and 
anxiety upon the Lord, yet the enemy is ever 
watchful, and as a roaring lion seeketh whom he 
may devour. The imagery is that of the prowl- 
ing lion of the Psalm and the Adversary of 
Job. The Christian, as he gives himself to 
sleep, is to do so in a Spirit of watchfulness, 
ready for alarm, prepared for attack; much as 
the guardian of a fortress does not permit 
himself to rest except it be with arms by his 
side. The pilgrim must be prepared to with- — 
stand temptations of the night—evil thoughts, 
vain imaginings, unchastened memories. he 
Evil One is to be shut out by a wall (crepéos, 
something hard or firm) of faith; but not for- 
getful that outside Satan wanders seeking a 
breach in the defenses, a door left unlocked, a 

gateway open. God is to be depended upon, 


112 Values of Catholic Faith 


but the soul must take the precautions dictated 
by prudence. 


A djutorium noster in nomine Domini. 


Almost at once comes the great liturgical 
exhortation. The Name of the Lord is ever 
symbolical of all that God is. Of old the Israel- 
ites never ventured to pronounce the ineffable 
and sacred Name, but used a circumlocution 
possible to their language, whereby though the 
letters indicated Jehovah (Yahweh), the sound 
uttered was simply The Lord (Adonai). Very 
early in the life of the Church, pilgrims in the 
Way transferred the ancient reverence to the 
Name of Jesus, for which eventually a feast 
day was set aside and an office composed by St. 
Bernard, which comprises some of the loveliest 
hymns in honour of the Holy Name. The 
Name of Jesus is at the heart of all Christian 
faith, the abiding witness of Incarnation and 
Atonement. Indeed, in the first age of the 
Church, pilgrims were content to utter their 
faith in a single phrase, Jesus is Lord, mean- 
ing thereby quite all that later more elaborate 
creeds undertook to express. — 


Pater noster. 


The exhortation having been said aloud, 
because it proclaims a common heritage—the 


The Divine Office 113 


Name whereby all must be saved; the Lord’s 
Prayer, summing up the desires of the soul, its 
hopes and fears and aspirations, is said secret- 


ly to God. 


Confiteor Deo. 


The preface to the office being finished, 
there is confession of sins in traditional liturgi- 
cal formula. It is made primarily to God, who 
has been chiefly offended and from whom for- 
giveness must come; and secondarily to the 
Saints, “the whole company of heaven,’’ whose 
intercession for the divine pardon would be 
engaged; and also, if there be occasion, to the 
brethren actually present and participating in 
the office. The soul, then freshly cleansed, is 
ready to unite with saints and angels in the 
praises of the Most High. 


Psalm iv. Cum invocarem. 


The first psalm is an evening prayer of 
great antiquity. In it the soul addresses itself to 
prayer in memory of the past; takes sides with 
God against his enemies, and to that end will 
purify itself with devotion and ordered sacri- 
fice. The depression of night, felt at the open- 
ing, soon changes into joyful trust. The care- 
less world is contrasted with the quiet peace of 
the cloister, of the soul in sanctuary. The evil 


114 Values of Catholic Fatth 


sons of men blaspheme God by neglect, seek 
after vanity, and are deceived by lies; but God 
chooseth to himself the man that is godly. The 
pilgrim admonishes himself to wait patiently 
upon God in prayer and meditation. “Be still, 
and know that I am God.” “In quietness and 
confidence shall be your strength.” He is to 
offer sacrifices of righteousness. The thought 
of the religious in the cloister, as of the Psalm- 
ist in the Temple, is not primarily of the sac- 
rifice of the cultus, but of those spiritual sacri- 
fices of the will and the heart which prepare 
for the great sacrifice. The psalm closes on a 
note of confidence and thanksgiving, of trustful 
repose in God’s protecting care for the night. 


“Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” 


Psalm xxxiv. In te, Domine. 
Psalm xc. Qui habitat. 

This psalm, written in times of peace when 
Israel had free access to the Temple, assures 
the pilgrim soul of the safety of those who 
make God’s Temple their habitual resort. The 
Christian transfers the reference to Church 
and Altar. 

One of the verses, that which refers to the 


‘sickness that destroyeth in the noonday,”’ re- 


The Divine Office 115 


cited daily by such multitudes under the vows 
of Religion, has come in its Christian applica- 
tion to have a special reference to the sin of 
accidie, which Cassian describes as “‘weariness 
of heart” and identifies with this daemonium 
meridianum. Dante in the Inferno punishes 
those guilty of this sin, and makes them to say, 


“We were once sad 
In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun; 
Now in these murky silences we are sad.” 


It has been identified with that “sorrow of 
the world’ which, St. Paul says, ‘“‘worketh 
death.” 

It is that sudden overwhelming distaste for 
the offices and practices of religion that now 
and again afflicts even faithful souls, denudes 
them of spiritual comfort, tries their faith, and 
tempts them to despair. “Yea, they thought 
scorn of that pleasant land, and gave no cre- 
dence unto his word; but murmured in their 
tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the 
Lord.” Accidie slays myriads who know not 
what their trouble is, for its effects are deadly 
disease of mind and will. The psalm proposes 
the remedies against it: Prayer and Forti- 


And so the Psalter goes on, with its freight 


116 Values of Catholic Faith 


of rich and tender and inspiring association. 
It is as if the words have taken on a deeper 
meaning and are charged with the power of the 
faith and devotion of the multitudes that have 
used them throughout the ages, have taken on 
almost a sacramental nature. The analysis, 
however, need be carried no further; even 
though so much must appear sadly inadequate 
to any pilgrim familiar with “the work of 
prayer,’ yet enough has been suggested to in- 
dicate the value of the Psalter to the pilgrim 
soul. 


Hymnus. Te lucis ante terminum. 


The hymn for Compline, ascribed to St. 
Ambrose in the fourth century, exquisitely 
gathers up afresh the lessons of the Psalter. 
At the end of day God the Father, the Cre- 
ator, is invoked as Keeper and Guardian of the 
soul, petitioned to inspire even dreams, to ban- 
ish unworthy fears and unholy thoughts, to 
preserve from the stain of sin and the attack 
of the Evil One, and all through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 


Canticum Simeonis. Nunc dimittis. 

The Canticle of Compline, following upon 
the Short Lesson from Jeremiah and the fol- 
lowing Versicles and Responses, is the Song of 


The Divine Office 117 


Simeon, the evening prayer dearest to the 
Christian heart, as it rejoices that now—after 
the day of work, expectation, suffering, trial— 
God mercifully permits it to behold his salva- 
tion, to be lightened by the Light that lighteth 
all the world. It is to such as Simeon that the 
Saviour comes: to those whose purity of heart 
prepares them for the vision of God; whose 
fidelity and patience have triumphed during 
slow, dull, uneventful years. 


“He to the lowly soul 

Doth still himself impart, 

And for His dwelling and His throne 
Chooseth the pure in heart.” 


Oremus. Visita, quaesumus, Domine. 


At last in this prayer the entire meaning, 
point, theme, of Compline is gathered into one 
petition—that God may vouchsafe his pres- 
ence and by that presence, destroy and make of 
no effect all those subtle snares by which evil 
spirits would entrap the soul; and grant to his 
faithful pilgrims the protection of the Angels. 

And then with the Benedicto the office of 
Compline is ended. By it, night by night, the 
Church reminds the faithful soul of the last 
great sleep of death; and that yet death is not 
to be a sleep but the finding of eternal sanctu- 


118 Values of Catholic Fatth 


ary under the shadow of the Most High. The 
pilgrim shall sleep but to awake in the presence 
of God. 

It challenges the imagination to conceive 
how more perfectly, with what greater inspira- 
tion and beauty of word and tone and cadence, 
the Catholic Church might commend the work 
of prayer to the Christian soul than in the Di- 
vine Office. 


Vi 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD 


Ir HAS often created comment and vainly 
challenged explanation that while the term The 
Kingdom of God was so frequently upon the 
lips of Jesus, it apparently dropped almost en- 
tirely from the Apostolic preaching. In con- 
trast to the three-score and more times that 
it is used by the Saviour, St. Luke employs it 
only five times in the Acts, St. Paul but a few 
more times in his letters, and the author of 
the Apocalypse but once. In line with the Apos- 
tolic usage the expression does not find a place 
in the Creeds, and does not extensively appear 
in subsequent theology. It was for long the 
custom loosely to identify the Kingdom with 
the Church and to use the terms almost inter- 
changeably. The explanations for this differing 
usage are many, and perhaps most of them 
contain some element of truth. It may be that 
the idea of the Kingdom of God was too large 


120 Values of Catholic Faith 


a concept, too inconclusive an one, to be patient 
of the formulization incumbent upon Christian 
teachers; as indeed it will appear by merely | 
cataloguing the various ways in which Jesus 
himself characterized the Kingdom and the 
many things to which he likened it. 

It is, in his conception, past, present, future; 
something which, though it exists in time, 1s 
yet eternal; something into which souls are 
born; something also that is born into souls. 
It is like a sower sowing good seed in various 
sorts of ground, good and bad, with strikingly 
different results; it is like the wheat-seed sown 
and springing up to be half-choked by tares. 
It is like to leaven hid in a measure of meal; 
to a candle set.upon a candlestick; to the 
housewife’s lost coin. It is as a merchant seek- 
ing goodly pearls and selling all that he has, 
to buy one of great price; it is like unto the 
grain of mustard-seed falling into the ground, 
decaying and growing up anew into a great 
shrub that will shelter the fowls of the air. It 
is like to a company of virgins waiting, with 
trimmed and untrimmed lamps, for the coming 
of the bridegroom; to a wedding supper to 
which the invited guests do not come, but from 
which also many are repelled because they are 
not worthy. It has many aspects and can be 


The Kingdom of God 121 


seen with different effect from a multitude of 
angles. It is as a pool of water, clear as crystal, 
but unguessably deep, and still unplumbed. 
Now and again the Church could be substituted 
without violence to the imagery or the mean- 
ing of the parables; but as often such a sub- 
stitution is impossible. It is not offered as an 
adequate explanation, but only as a partial and 
tentative suggestion that the Kingdom of God 
stands in the conception of Jesus for the ideal, 
the all-embracing truth of God and of his own 
life and mission in revealing that truth; while 
the Church was devised by him as the great 
means, the principle instrument for bringing the 
Kingdom to pass. 

- It would be an endless task to attempt to 
consider the Kingdom in its every aspect and 
from every angle; but the effort to examine it 
from certain viewpoints, arbitrarily selected or 
determined by purely personal considerations, 
may not be uninstructive. 


r 


The most effective method of considering 
various implications of the Kingdom is by care- 
ful consideration of the similes used by the 
Master to convey the idea to his first disciples. 


122 Values of Catholic Faith 


The saying that the Kingdom is like a net is 
one of the simplest of these similes, and like 
all other of the Lord’s sayings, contains far 
deeper than just the obvious meanings. The 
word net is so simple and the thing for which 
it stands is so familiar, that it is not imme- 
diately apparent how precisely the word ex- 
emplifies the nature and constitution of the 
Church, which in this instance obviously is in- 
terchangeable with the word Kingdom. Con- 
sidering the Church, as Catholics must, as a 
divinely given and endowed organism, descend- 
ing from generation to generation with a con- 
tinuous (if always developing and expanding) 
tradition and doctrine, is to postulate author- 
itative organs of that continuity; is to see in 
the historic episcopate that principle of contin- 
uity in operation. And were the succession of | 
bishops to be set forth on paper, linking each 
bishop to each of his consecrators, there is a 
literal demonstration of the precision in the 
Saviour likening the Kingdom to a net; for the 
resulting diagram is an actual network. Unlike 
the succession of a dynasty from father to son, 
the authority of the Church is transmitted in 
the form of closely interwoven meshes, guar- 
anteeing not merely a continuous but a stable 
succession; for though it might break down at 


The Kingdom of God 123 


this or that point, yet the whole would not be 
seriously impaired. 

. The netlike nature of the Kingdom is again 
apparent in the system of apologetic by which 
its faith is intellectually defended or by which 
it is rationally set forth to persuade minds not 
already convinced. Christian apologetic is sure- 
ly not a single sustained argument of flawless 
logic; that is to say, it is not a chain of reason- 
ing. A chain is only as strong as its weakest 
link, and if there were but one.argument for 
the Christian faith, and in that argument a 
single fallacy, the whole would be invalidated. 
On the contrary, Christian apologetic is a net- 
work of arguments, now loosely, now closely 
woven together, constituting an intricate and 
complicated pattern of philosophical, historical, 
psychological, and empirical strands; reasons 
and evidences capable of affording many acute 
minds infallible proofs of that wherein they 
have been instructed. 

Once more the netlike quality of the King- 
dom appears in the great and legitimate variety 
of practice and personal experience that obtain 
in it. Indeed, there is no variety of religious ex- 
perience (if it have any reason for existence) 
that can not find a home in the Catholic Church, 
that has not done so. Nothing could be more 


124. Values of Catholic Faith 


impossible to define than the characteristic 
Christian experience. What is characteristic in 
the Kingdom is practically every experience 
that is one of true religious value. Moreover, 
it might seem as if the Master contemplated 
the inevitable existence of both heresy and 
schism, foresaw rents and tears in the fabric 
of his Church. But just as a net may be torn 
without ceasing to be a useful implement, so 
the Church, rent indeed as it actually has been 
and is, though with whatever loss to its efficien- 
cy, surely has not ceased to be useful. It is help- 
ful in this connection to recall that one of the 
most vivid and pleasing pictures in the Gospel 
is of the fishermen, called by Jesus to be fishers 
of men, mending their nets, indeed—it is to be 
inferred—spending much of their time in doing 
so. Doubtless he contemplated the probability 
that the members of his kingdom must often be 
engaged in the same task. 


y 


Again Jesus said of his Kingdom that it 
was like unto leaven which a woman took and 
hid in three measures of meal till the whole 
was leavened. 

It has been generally assumed that by this 
saying he meant to indicate the secrecy and 


The Kingdom of God 125 


rapidity with which the Kingdom would propa- 
gate itself in the world, and to prophesy that 
ultimately the existing state of society would, 
as a result of this process, coalesce with the 
Kingdom of God. Ingenious commentators 
have further seen in the three measures of 
meal esoteric references to the three parts of 
man—body, soul, and spirit; or to the three 
elements of society—the material earth on 
which it exists, the state, and the church.. This 
therefore was a favourite text in the nineteenth 
century when the idea of progress was so unl- 
versally entertained. 

Before attempting to ascertain the value of 
the Kingdom actually indicated by the Lord in 
this saying, it is worth while to note the inepti- 
tude of the common interpretation of it; an in- 
terpretation so inept indeed that it has been 
quoted in defense of ideas that it actually con- 
tradicts, or of late—since those ideas are no 
longer so confidently accepted—has been per- 
mitted to sink into unmerited obscurity through 
sheer inability to discover an adequate explana- 
tion. 

It may be asserted at once that the propa- 
gation of the Kingdom has been neither secret 
nor rapid. What the light-hearted commenta- 
tors who have glided easily over the parable 


126 Values of Catholic Faith 


have alleged to be secrecy was in point of fact 
only the obscurity in which necessarily the 
Kingdom first developed. From that awful 
hour in Jerusalem, when what was done, so 
dreadful in itself and yet so beneficent in its 
effect, was not done ina corner, to the present 
“publicity” in which Christianity functions and 
for which its official leaders plead, secrecy is 
the least characteristic thing about it. From the 
insistence of the first apologists that there was 
nothing occult about Christian practice, to the 
indignation aroused by an ingenuous young 
Tractarian arguing for ‘‘a certain economy” in 
imparting religious truth, the notion that they 
have anything to conceal has been indignantly 
repudiated by Christians everywhere. Their 
very mysteries are celebrated openly; and are 
called mysteries because they are concerned 
with the infinite and the eternal, not because 
they are secrets to be imparted only to the 
initiate. Moreover, the notion that the King- 
dom is to develop secretly is strangely at va- 
riance with Jesus’s other description that it is 
as a light to be placed upon a candlestick so 
that it may illumine the whole house; and as 
strikingly in conflict with St. John’s conception 
of Christ as the Light that lighteth every man. 
Even when the Kingdom is conceived as a 


The Kingdom of God 127 


spiritual force within, it is to be manifested 
outwardly and be known by its fruits. 

Nor is the notion of rapidity in the propa- 
gation of the Kingdom sustained by a serious 
reading of its history. Doubtless at different 
periods, after the conversion of Constantine, 
after the reorganization of Europe by Charle- 
magne, at the “Great Awakening,” there has 
been a rapid propagation of superficial Chris- 
tian ideas, but the very nations that have most 
quickly and easily been christened have been 
the least edifying examples of Christianization. 
Time is a baffling concept, but from what is 
reckoned the beginning of history, the Chris- 
tian era has occupied about a fourth part of 
that period; and if toward the end of two mil- 
leniums after Christ only a quarter of the in- 
habitants of the world are nominally Chris- 
tian and only a fraction of those genuinely so, 
it may well be doubted if the rapidity with 
which the Kingdom would propagate itself was 
the Lord’s meaning in likening it to leaven. 
And if indeed that was his meaning, it may be 
doubted if the simile was a true one. If for 
various reasons Jesus is to be trusted, it is a 
wiser, if not a common course, to relinquish 
what may be a mistaken interpretation than to 
deny the trustworthiness of his words. 


128 Values of Catholic Fatth 


Happily it is no longer necessary to dispel 
the other notion that by this saying Jesus meant 
to teach the gradual evolution of society, by 
means of a steady progress, into the Kingdom 
of God, though it should comfort the pilgrim 
to recall that Jesus never uttered a sentence 
in support of the superstition of progress. But 
if it were the fact that somewhere else Jesus 
so taught, he does not do so in saying that the 
Kingdom is like unto leaven. In point of fact, 
it absolutely contradicts such a notion; and it 
is amazing that this has so seldom been real- 
ized. 

It is likely true that if an entire nation actu- 
ally believed and lived the life depicted in the 
Gospel, the civilization of that state would be- 
come as nearly ideal as we can conceive a 
civilization to be. It is surely right to hold that 
there is embedded in Christ’s teaching prin- 
ciples that would afford ideal solutions for so- 
cial as well as for individual problems; but it 
is a very different thing to assume that human 
society will inevitably work itself into this 
ideal situation. The assumption is warranted 
neither by what the Gospels assert as to the 
success of those principles nor by the fate which 
they have so far met at the hands of men. It 
is not without significance that on the same 


The Kingdom of God 129 


occasion Jesus foretold the coming of the Holy 
Spirit, he uttered with equal solemnity the words 
of warning, The Prince of this world cometh, 
and hath nothing in me. The Lord always set 
the world and the Kingdom over against each 
other in sharp contrast and contradiction. 
Though the pilgrims in the Way were to be 
in the world, they were never to be of it. The 
world would hate them, persecute them, en- 
deavour to destroy them as it had destroyed 
(or fancied it had destroyed) their Master be- 
fore them. Though none could know as he the 
infinite values of the truths he enunciated, not 
only for souls but for such groups as would 
accept them, apparently he had little confidence 
that many individuals or any society would do 
so. He foretold that to the very end his own 
would be set apart, and he asked with some- 
thing more than rhetorical effect whether he 
should find faith on earth when he came again. 
He foresaw such a complication of evils in 
human society and such a degeneration of the 
natural man as would finally result in complete 
disruption and catastrophic ruin. He spoke in 
no uncertain terms about an “end of the 
world,” which the majority of his followers 
have chosen to regard as so figurative as to be 
devoid of meaning. The notion of an ultimate 


130 Values of Catholic Faith 


universal catastrophe has been tacitly dismissed 
as one of Jesus’s unfortunate mistakes, or if 
that is too harsh a term for the blithely op- 
timistic commentators to apply, as one of his 
“hard sayings” obviously not designed to be 
understood, or perhaps to be ultimately appre- 
hended in that large synthesis which phi- 
losophy assumes so glibly and of which as yet 
no signs are perceptible. In reality the hard 
sayings of Jesus are the least mysterious and 
the most definite in the Gospels. It is not that 
they are difficult of apprehension, but that they 
are distasteful to the unregenerate intel- 
ligence. 

Before 1914 it was sheer heresy to question 
the sacred secular dogma of progress. It was 
the creed of materialism that the world was 
growing better, and as materialism was in the 
saddle, assertion dispensed with argument. De- 
lusions are hard to dispel, especially when they 
minister to the sense of social security and 
physical comfort. If progress can be seen in the 
Great War and in the appalling miseries and 
disorders that accompanied it and still follow 
in its wake, there is no limit to human credulity. 
And as a matter of fact there is no such limit; 
for it is conceivable that were the universe in 
a state of collapse about them, there would be 


The Kingdom of God 131 


optimistic souls still convinced that all was 
good in this best of all possible worlds. The 
delusion of progress, and the assumption that 
Jesus shared it, was not only entrenched as a 
popular superstition by the industrial revolu- 
tion of the eighteenth Century, but supported 
by the theories of the nineteenth invented to 
interpret recent observations of the material 
earth made by geologists and biologists. [t was 
readily assumed and passionately preached, 
that from very small beginnings, organic and 
inorganic matter were evolving toward ulti- 
mate perfection. What was true of matter must 
‘obviously, so it was asserted, be true of man; 
history therefore was conceived likewise as an 
evolution from the imperfect to the perfect, 
through struggle and pain doubtless, by means 
of the survival of the fittest or by some other 
means (there were always a variety of hypoth- 
eses from which to choose, and if one were 
rendered untenable by criticism, speculation 
could easily slide to another) ; but by whatever 
means, mankind was evolving from the pri- 
mordial protoplasm, through pollywog and ape, 
to the perfect society of perfect men. Something 
of the sort Christians also persuaded them- 
selves Jesus must have meant by the Kingdom 
of God, and they fancied that his saying about 


122 Values of Catholic Fatth 


leaven was a text to prove it. But this identifi- 
cation of evolution with progress is undergoing 
dissolution at the hands of the very science that 
established it. Scientific doctrine is suffering a 
revolution as disastrous for this notion as was 
the world war. The degradation of energy, the 
disintegration of matter, inevitable, ultimate, 
universal catastrophe, are now as freely postu- 
lated by speculative scientists as a generation 
ago they insisted that the conservation of 
energy, the uniformity of matter, and the ever- 
lasting permanence of the universe, were 
orthodoxies the which to question was to be an 
ignoramus. By contrast with some of these 
modern prophecies, those of Jesus seem rel- 
atively broad and vague. But since it is clear 
that Jesus never shared the delusion of prog- 
ress, it is not improbable that in likening the 
Kingdom of God to leaven he actually meant 
to make a helpful and not a confusing sugges- 
tion. 

It will help to understand this parable if it 
is remembered that leaven is a principle of cor- 
ruption, and that to speak of something being 
leavened is to assert that the leaven has worked 
in a bad sense. Even when leaven is thought of 
as working in meal or dough, though the effect 
is to lighten, refine, render more palatable, the 


The Kingdom of God 133 


lump is not in the least purified. Therefore, in 
likening the Kingdom of God to leaven, Jesus 
was asserting that Christian principles would 
indeed work in human society, lightening it, re- 
fining it, rendering it superficially more accept- 
able and agreeable, but not by any means puri- 
fying it. Such in fact has been the effect of 
Christianity upon the world. There is scarcely 
a field of human activity and endeavour in the 
western world at least that has not been 
affected by Christianity; and yet it would be a 
rash and undemonstrable assertion, to say that 
any aspect of civilization is genuinely Christian. 
In manners, morals, art, literature, the devices 
systematized for commerce, comfort, govern- 
ment, in each and all can be traced the influence 
of Christian ideas, but not one of them in any 
particular exemplifies Christian ideals or ends 
or is designed to realize them. A little leaven 
leaveneth the whole lump, but in the bad sense. 
For the worst feature of it all is that the leaven- 
ing influence of the Gospel has resulted, even 
amongst the great majority of those who 
acknowledge and confess themselves Christians, 
in confusing Christianity and civilization, the 
Kingdom of God and the world, inextricably 
to entangle those which Jesus taught should 
be sharply contrasted, set over against each 


1 34. Values of Catholic Fatth 


other in permanent and irreconcilable antago- 
nism. Jesus but once again referred to leaven, 
and then it was to bid his disciples beware 
of it. 

St. Paul employs the figure in a graphic pas- 
sage of the First Epistle to the Corinthians 
(v, 7 ff), and precisely in the manner in which 
Jesus used it. He was contrasting the salvation 
by faith which is the heritage of the believer, 
with the evil but alluring world in which his 
lot was cast; and he was warning those who 
had already permitted themselves to yield to 
its temptations. “Your glorying,’’ he wrote to 
them, “is not good. Know ye not that a little 
leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out 
therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new 
lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ 
our passover is sacrificed for us. [Therefore let 
us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, 
neither with the leaven of malice and wicked- 
ness, but with the unleavened bread of sincer- 
ity and truth.” It was with something of the 
same thought in mind that in writing on an- 
other occasion to the same community of Chris- 
tians (II, v, 21) he gave utterance to the strik- 
ing paradox—‘‘He hath made him to be sin 
for us, who knew no sin: that we might be the 
righteousness of God in him’’; daring to speak 


The Kingdom of God 135 


of Christ in as startling a manner as Jesus 
himself spoke of his Kingdom. 

If Jesus’ profound and fundamental char- 
acterization of the Kingdom as not of this 
world could be apprehended (however difficult 
the long accepted mistakes render such appre- 
hension), the pilgrim has in his mind a clue to 
the meaning of history; and, indeed, the only 
clue. In the light of this truth, the parable of 
the leaven reveals to the pilgrim one of the 
greatest values of the Kingdom. It teaches him 
the danger in the present confusion of ideas, it 
instructs him anew as to the necessary delimita- 
tions of the Kingdom and the world; it enables 
him to avoid the dangerous and possibly fatal 
mistake of identifying a christened civilization 
or a secularized Church with the scheme of 
salvation; and it reveals to him once more, as 
in a clarified atmosphere, that the Kingdom 
is essentially a Way through the world unto 
God who is above and beyond it. 


ae 

Jesus said of his Kingdom that it was like 

unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, 

who, when he found one pearl of great price, 

went and sold all that he had and bought it 
(Met. xiii, 45). 


136 Values of Catholic Faith 


Obviously this parable illustrates the su- 
preme worth of the Kingdom; and it is paral- 
leled by that other saying of the Master about 
the utter worthlessness of the world, the which 
though a man gained the whole of it, and lost 
his soul, profiteth nothing. That the Kingdom 
is of supreme worth would not need to have 
been stressed were it not that pilgrims, though 
they are not to be of the world, are neverthe- 
less very much in it, and the sights and sounds 
of it are insistent, and oftentimes alluring. 

Even to the pilgrim in the Way, life is an 
affair of routine. The exceptions of whom this 
is not true are far more rare than appears to 
casual observation. his routine is practically 
inevitable. It is essential to successful endeavour 
in any department of activity; it has its part 
in the exchange of the amenities of social in- 
tercourse; indeed, is necessary even in play. 
Inevitable though it be, and definitely as its 
inevitability may be recognized, routine of any 
sort, nevertheless, tends to become dull and 
exercises a dulling effect upon the subject of it. 
The result is the paradoxical spectacle of most 
persons in the world making continual efforts 
to escape from routine; even when, as in many 
cases, they appreciate its value. These efforts 
to escape are made in response to a deep- 


The Kingdom of God 137 


rooted instinct. They are as inevitable as 
routine itself. 

A casual glance will indicate the great va- 
riety of escapes possible in any cultural environ- 
ment. The exchange of hospitality in social 
life, the pursuit of sport or of games, the opera, 
the drama, the amateur cultivation of musical 
or artistic tastes, the indulgence in hobbies ;— 
a long catalogue might be drawn up of the 
ways in which people with more or less suc- 
cess seek to escape from the routine which life 
imposes upon all. These methods are in them- 
selves wholesome and desirable diversions, 
often useful avocations; wrong indeed only 
when indulged at the expense of primary duties 
and necessary work. But pursued to excess they 
issue in disastrous dissipations; the impulse to 
escape from routine becomes an end in itself, 
and in exact proportion as it does so, defeats 
its purpose; renders its victims the slaves of 
a still more intolerable routine, the hopeless 
effort to satisfy imperative and insatiable de- 
sires. But it is needless further to analyse con- 
ditions too sadly familiar. The point made is 
that these defeated attempts at escape are 
but the excessive yielding to an universal in- 
stinct; an instinct, however, that within limits 
must be indulged, lest sheer routine reduce 


138 Values of Catholic Faith 


humanity to a mere mechanism, deprive it of 
the spiritual and intellectual freedom essential 
to happiness and satisfaction. 

Fortunately individuals are differently con- 
stituted, and their methods of escape are of a 
multiform variety. This is the source, since peo- 
ple do not understand each other, of much 
mutual criticism. Indeed, there are few things 
more frequently the subject of adverse com- 
ment than the way in which this person or that 
seeks to escape the routine of his life. It is easy 
to criticise that which does not make a personal 
appeal. Probably no method of escape seems 
so dull to people who do not pursue it as re- 
ligion. And yet religion in this respect is as a 
pearl of great price. 

Doubtless the idea of religion as a means 
of escape from the intolerable routine of a 
work-a-day world has not often occurred even 
to conscientious pilgrims. As an escape from 
sin or from the bondage of fear—these ideas 
are familiar enough; but just as wholesome 
and blessed escape from the intolerable routine 
of life, this is seldom realized. And yet it is 
one of the distinct values of the Kingdom of 
God. 

It is realized by many, perhaps, in a love of 
prayer and of the Church and its worship; for 


The Kingdom of God 139 


some, doubtless, in a love of the intellectual 
ideas connoted by religious faith, theology in 
short; for others still, in a surrender to the use- 
ful service for which it affords such abundant 
‘opportunity. In parenthesis, it may be observed, 
that the way religion oftenest fails as a means 
of escape is when it is conceived primarily as 
a code of conduct. This dictum often offends, 
since few are wholly emancipated from the in- 
fluence of puritan forefathers who completely 
succeeded in divorcing beauty from holiness. But, 
as a matter of fact, whenever religion is regarded 
“as a prop to morality, as playing second fiddle 
to conduct, as being the mere supernatural 
guarantee to a system of ethics, religion itself 
evaporates and morality hardens into austerity 
or degenerates into license. Morality, or, more 
strictly speaking, holiness, is the fruit of relig- 
ion; grows out of it; but when substituted for 
it or put first in thought or practice, has a fatal 
effect, not only on religion, but on itself. Re- 
ligion—that is to say, access to God, love of 
God as transcendent master and revealed re- 
deemer, as manifested in human brotherhood, 
—must be first and foremost: only so may its 
reality be appreciated; only so, indeed, will it 
prove inspiration to moral life and disciplined 
conduct. 


140 Values of Catholic Faith 


So to the pilgrim, if religion does not appeal 
as a way of escape in the sense defined, it is 
because he has failed to use his intelligence and 
his imagination. Certainly it is often repre- 
sented just so in Scripture; and nowhere more 
poetically than in that beautiful hymn which 
the first Isaiah interpolates into his prophecy: 


In that day shall this song be sung in the land of 

Judah: 
We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint 

for walls and bulwarks. 

Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which 
keepeth the truth may enter in. 

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is 
stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. 

Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord God is 
everlasting strength... . 

With my soul have I desired thee in the night: yea, 
with my spirit within me will I seek thee 
Gatly es me 

Come, my people, enter thou into my chambers, and 
shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it 
were for a little moment... . 


So it is in the terms of escape that the Lord 
often gives the call to follow him: — 


Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
and I will refresh you. 


The Kingdom of God 141 


Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am 
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls. 

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 


For all that religion must become the in- 
spiration and the means to holiness, goodness, 
righteousness; for all that it must issue in lives 
of useful service, of charity and justice; the 
Saviour calls to religion first as an escape from 
the burden of life and the intolerable and numb- 
ing routine of mere living. He represents it 
as an orientation of the soul toward God, as a 
coming to himself, as a following in the Way, 
as a sharing in the divine spirit, and a partak- 
ing in the divine life. And religion in the soul 
first manifests itself as a spiritual response, an 
uplifting of the heart, a setting forth upon a 
pilgrimage, a questing for God. It is this sense 
of it, this experience of it, that invests it with 
its real allure, its persuasive appeal, its prom- 
ise of such ever-fresh realizations, of clear in- 
sights, of pure and strong emotions. It is so 
often and so wonderfully the opening of a door 
into another world, an initiation into a higher 
life; a world and a life in which emotion, fancy, 
imagination, idealism, all have freest and full- 
est play; in which the affections, disciplined and 
purged as is so often necessary, discover their 


142 Values of Catholic Faith 


absolute liberty. his experience is not sus- 
ceptible to analysis in exact terms; to crystali- 
zation in words and ideas at once delicate and 
durable. It is a sense, however momentary, that 
the soul is really freed from the distractions 
and the cares alike of its ordinary existence; 
free to choose, to be what it will; nay, that it 
most wonderfully is all that God could wish, 
all that he could exact; and is this in spite of 
the tangled destinies, influences, in which it ap- 
pears outwardly to be enmeshed. For the dura- 
tion of the experience, time and eternity 
coalesce. There is an intuition of God, an in- 
tuition of the self, an intimation that reality 
has been surprised in its hiding-place, that im- 
mortality has been glimpsed and foretasted. 
It is something of this sort doubtless that 
the Saviour meant when he spoke of his King- 
dom under another figure, as like unto a fold 
from which his flock should go in and out, as 
into a higher world, and find pasture—sus- 
tenance for mind, body, spirit. It is this escape 
into the solitude of the spirit, into the spiritual 
inner world, that invigorates, revives, renews 
the soul. It is this escape that invests life upon 
return to the work-a-day world with a glorious 
and ever-renewed interest, and that enables the 
pilgrim to fulfill his necessary routine tasks 





The Kingdom of God 143 


with zest, vigour, earnestness. Verily, it 
seemeth to him, he hath found a pearl of great 
price, and that had it been necessary to sell 
all with which to buy it, he would have acted 
wisely. 


4. 


A poet has somewhere said that this mate- 
rial creation, at once so beautiful and so awe- 
ful, so intricate and so stupendous, is, as it 
were, the garment by which we perceive its 
divine Creator; or,.in more prosaic terms, that 
this outward, visible universe is the manifesta- 
tion of an inward, spiritual reality. Some such 
conception necessarily is involved in any spiri- 
tual interpretation of phenomena; it was 
frankly assumed by Jesus, and it is the essence 
of that sacramental principle developed into a 
system by his followers. It was a profound in- 
sight into this idea that led St. Paul to call the 
Church, equivalent in his thought to the King- 
dom of God, the Body of Christ. 

This figure, richest of the several designed 
to illustrate the many-sided nature of the King- 
dom, presents the Church as an organism of 
which Christ is the head and all those united 
to him are the members. The doctrine derived 
therefrom is capable of and has received ex- 


144 Values of Catholic Faith 


tended development at the hands of theolo- 
gians. Perhaps because of the very multiplicity 
of words spent upon the exposition of it, for 
the pilgrim in the Way its outline is often 
blurred, and he is able to derive from it few 
clear and simple notions. Obviously he knows 
the Church to be a society or organism, of 
which Jesus is the head, into which sacramen- 
tally he is baptized, and wherein he is fed by 
sacramental food—Christ’s body and blood; 
but it is likely that he has learned the truth in- 
dependently of any information supplied by 
the Pauline metaphor. However instructive 
that figure has become when subjected to skill- 
ful development by theologians, such highly 
developed doctrine immediately is confusing 
rather than helpful. The expression The Body 
of Christ, having been used as a figure to ex- 
press the life of Christ given in the Eucharist, 
at first confuses when it is employed as a meta- 
phor to describe the Church, a situation from 
which many pilgrims are never delivered. With- 
out disputing the truth of the developed doc- 
trine, it is likely that the confusion arises in 
ordinary minds, as is the case with so many of 
the figures employed by Jesus and the Apostolic 
writers, simply because a literal meaning is not 
looked for and a direct interpretation at- 


The Kingdom of God 145 


tempted. It should be recalled that both Jesus 
and his Apostles by their use of figures of 
speech designed to clarify, not to confuse, their 
teaching in the minds of the first disciples. To 
pilgrims these figures were to be lights on the 
Way; the metaphor was a veil but to the 
uninitiate. It follows naturally that the figures 
were chosen because they were true, and that 
they remain true however elaborately theology 
may develop the doctrine. Indeed, they afford 
the surest test whereby to check doctrinal de- 
velopment; a test as often honoured in the 
breach as in the observance. It remains that the 
sure way to ascertain the value of a parable 
or a figure of speech employed by Jesus or by 
the Apostolic writers, is by a direct and literal 
interpretation. 

Therefore in calling the Church the Body 
of Christ it may be assumed that St. Paul meant 
that pilgrims in the Way were quite literally 
to conceive themselves to be members of that 
body, that is to say, to be the eyes and ears, 
the lips and tongue, the hands and feet, of the 
Lord Jesus. Such a literal relation of the mem- 
bers of his Church to Christ fits in perfectly 
with the economy of the Incarnation. God re- 
veals himself in the human nature of Christ. 
Therefore human nature assumed by the di- 


146 Values of Catholic Faith 


vine person Jesus is redeemed, and human be- 
ings are saved by their union with that Christ. 
This is the scheme of salvation. 

And no more exalted notion of the necessary 
union of the soul with Christ can be afforded 
than by a literal interpretation of the Pauline 
metaphor. The members of Christ’s body are 
the eyes with which he sees, the ears through 
which he hears, the hands which render his 
kindly and his healing offices, the feet which 
bear the messages of good tidings and good will, 
the lips and tongues which proclaim his truth 
and goodness. If Christ’s work is done, it must 
be done by those who are united with him in 
virtue of their membership in his body. This - 
conception gives a new and deeper understand- 
ing of the sacramental system as an extension 
of the Incarnation; it illustrates with a daz- 
zling light the Pauline conception of the bodies 
of the redeemed as temples of the Holy Ghost; 
and it gives a mystical apprehension of that 
ultimate reality when God shall be all in all. 
It is doubtful if any more profound exposition 
can convey the supreme value of this metaphor 
about the Kingdom of God as clearly and elo- 
quently as this simple and literal interpretation 
of it. For some at least, to say so much is to 
say as much as need be said. 


The Kingdom of God 147 
5. 

A metaphor, frequently used by the Apos- 
tolic writers to describe the Church, so gener- 
ally equivalent in their thought to the King- 
dom of God, is the term, The Bride of Christ. 
Indeed, this figure is implied by Jesus himself 
when he asks if the children of the bridecham- 
ber can mourn or fast as long as the bride- 
groom is with them, and it is in the background 
of the somewhat elaborate parables of the Vir- 
gins with trimmed and untrimmed lamps and 
of the marriage feast made by the king for 
his son. * 

The use of this symbolism, however, was 
original neither with our Lord nor with his 
Apostles. They adopted and transferred an 
imagery frequently employed by the writers 
of the Old Testament, who depicted Yah- 
weh as the bridegroom and Israel as the 
bride. For thy maker is thy husband, is the 
basis of one of the second Isaiah’s exhortations 
to the people of God. Turn, O back-sliding 
children, saith the Lord, cried Jeremiah, for I 
am married unto you. Hosea still more beau- 
tifully expressed the idea by putting into the 


—_———————, 





1The chief New Testament references are as follows:—Mt. 
ix, 15; Xxii, 2 sqq.; xxv, 4sqq.; Mk ii, 19; Lk v, 24; Jn iii, 
29; 2 Cor. xi, 2; Eph. v, 25, 323: Rev. xix, 7; xxi, 29;. xxii, 17. 


148 Values of Catholic Faith 


mouth of Yahweh the words: J will betroth 
them unto me forever; yea, I will betroth them 
unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and 
in lovingkindness, and in mercies.” Despite the 
fact that Psalm 45 was in all probability a mar- 
riage ode composed and sung in honour of the 
nuptials of the conquering Jehu, the Jewish 
commentators have almost invariably seen in 
it a mystical presentation of the relation be- 
tween Yahweh and Israel. In like manner they 
have interpreted the Song of Songs, and been 
followed in both instances by Christian com- 
mentators, save that these transfer the imagery 
to Christ and his Church. Except for such a 
mystical interpretation it is doubtful if the. 
beautiful but sensuous idyll of the Song of 
Songs could have maintained a place in the 
Christian canon of scripture. 

This imagery, derived from the relation of 
the two sexes, has been by no means confined to 
Jewish or Christian thought. It seems, on the 
other hand, to be practically universal, to be 
the expression of an instinctive association 
rooted deep in humanity. Into the precise na- 
ture of that instinct it is not necessary to en- 
quire, nor indeed has it often proved profitable 
to do so. Its expression in pagan religions and 


? Cf. Is. liv, 5; Jer. iii, 14; Hos. ii, 19. 


The Kingdom of God 149 


in most of the cults of the ancient East are 
familiar. In particular the classic myths of 
Greece and Rome have become part of the in- 
tellectual heritage of the western world. But 
these myths have been so refined by poetic 
fancy and a chastened literary taste that their 
essential nature as well as their religious as- 
sociations have been mostly obscured or for- 
gotten. It was undoubtedly the essential gross- 
ness of the classic mythology that inspired the 
horror and justified the execration poured upon 
it by the early Fathers of the Church. Had it 
not been for the use of a kindred symbolism on 
the part of the psalmists and prophets of the 
Old Covenant, for that such a sensuous com- 
position as the Song of Songs was found in- 
corporated in their canon of scripture, and for 
that both the Saviour and his Apostles made 
frequent use of kindred metaphors, it is not 
likely that this imagery would have appeared 
in Christian thought. Its use must have devel- 
oped before the open conflict with paganism in 
the third century. 

But there is no need for regret that it was 
the Apostles rather than the Fathers who for- 
mulated the metaphors designed to describe 
God's Kingdom, as there is no reason to doubt 
that the very boldness with which they have 


150 Values of Catholic Fatih 


been employed to elucidate the highest and 
most spiritual ideas has directly served a pure 
morality. Indeed, this symbolism has served to 
exalt the married state as not only in itself 
ideal but as the sole condition of physical love. 
The reaction from paganism had too nearly 
succeeded in exalting virginity permanently 
above the married state, and in emphasizing 
the value of ascetism quite at the expense of, 
indeed with disastrous consequence to, normal, 
happy relationships between the sexes. And 
when at times this was the case, it resulted 
often in the imagery depicting the relation be- 
tween Christ and his Church being employed 
to suggest that between Christ and individual 
members of the Church, a conception which 
it is difficult not to regard as definitely patho- 
logical. Happily these ideas, at the time in- 
evitably derived from the reaction against 
paganism, have not unwholesomely prevailed. 
On the contrary the Church emphasized the 
nobility of marriage, declared it modelled upon 
the union between Christ and the Church, and 
invested it with the dignity and value of a 
sacrament. And if also the Church, remember- 
ing the example of the Saviour and of his 
Mother, regarded virginity as a state of per- 
fection, it is to be noted that it has ever held 


The Kingdom of God 151 


a special vocation and a particular grace as 
required therefor. 

But what is chiefly characteristic of this sym- 
bolism in Christian thought, what sharply con- 
trasts the use made of it in pagan religions, is 
that the emphasis in calling the Church the 
bride of Christ is upon the purity requisite in 
God’s People, the uniqueness, exclusiveness, and 
permanence of their relation to him, and the 
overwhelming devotion that must characterize 
them. Such emphasis underlies the occasional 
references of Jesus to himself as the bride- 
groom, and is emphatically asserted by St. Paul 
and by the author of the Apocalypse. Indeed, 
the Revelation of St. John the Divine com- 
monly refers to the relation of Christ and the 
Church as a betrothal, conceiving the marriage 
of the Lamb to be celebrated at the consumma- 
tion of all things; and usually, though not in- 
variably, it identifies the bride with that ideal 
and perfected Church to be revealed in all its 
glory only at the Last Day, the Holy City, the 
New Jerusalem, coming down from God out 
of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her 
husband; arrayed in fair linen, clean and white, 
which is the righteousness of the saints. 

It is desirable that such considerations be 
taken into account, for this imagery has so 


152 Values of Catholic Fatih 


often been misconstrued and belittled or has 
been confused with kindred yet contradictory 
symbolism associated with other religions. 
Rightly estimated it has a positive value as a 
description of the Kingdom of God. 

To the enthusiasm of old time, when pagan- 
ism had been forgotten or perhaps too much 
assimilated, the Song of Songs was favourite 
pasturage for commentary in this connection, 
for witness to which it is but necessary to refer 
to the marginal notes of the translations of the 
King James version of the Bible or to innumer- 
able passages in the Fathers. ° 


Who is she that looketh forth as the morn- 
ing, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and ter- 
rible as an army with banners? * 


The modern pilgrim too commonly thinks of 
the Church merely in its practical aspect, as a 
visible organization engaged upon the preach- 





®In the Roman Breviary and Missal the Song of Songs is fre- 
quently interpreted as applicable to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the 
spotless purity and exquisite loveliness of the King’s bride being 
justly estimated adequately to typify her. Indeed, all of the anti- 
phons of the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary are taken from 
the Song of Songs. Appropriate and beautiful as this usage often 
is, it nevertheless tends to confuse the traditional interpretation as 
describing the union between Christ and His Church. 

*Song of Songs vi, 10. This verse constitutes the short chapter 
in the Roman Office for the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 
It is, however, invariably applied to the Church by the Fathers. 


The Kingdom of God 153 


ing of the Gospel, the administration of the 
sacraments, and the direction of works of char- 
ity. He is a little unaccustomed to thinking of 
her as the immortal bride of the divine Lover, 
standing forth in all the beauty of early morn- 
ing, in the pale splendour of the setting moon, 
in the glorious light of the rising sun, and in 
a strength as terrible as it is beautiful. 

The sheer loveliness of her mystical aspect 
should oftener be contemplated. She is the nat- 
ural home of the soul, wherein devotion and 
love of the Father in heaven may find contin- 
- ual expression in the offices and liturgies sancti- 
fied by the piety of centuries, in the cadences of 
those ancient songs of Zion which voice the 
most tender as well as the most lofty aspira- 
tions, that give utterance to so much otherwise 
inexpressible. It finds expression also in the 
prayers of the saints, and in all that work of 
prayer upon which she is ever devoutly, happily, 
busily engaged. Lovely as the moonlight is the 
Bride of Christ, 


“, 4 «a rose of Sharon, 


A lily of the valleys . . 
. a fountain of gardens, 
A well of living waters, 
And flowing streams from Lebanon.” 


154 Values of Catholic Faith 


So also she deserves contemplation as the 
sphere of truth. There is a modern notion that 
doctrine is a needless burden upon faith, and 
that only the credulous regard it as important: 
a notion as shallow as it is futile, if for no other 
reason than that the mind as restlessly seeks 
truth and will be ultimately dissatisfied with 
error, as that the heart is troubled with evil 
though it know not why, and is restless till it 
rest in God. It ignores the chief reason for the 
gift of the Holy Spirit, and denies the most 
important function of the Spirit as leader unto 
truth. hose who fixed the form—the content 
is revealed—of the Church’s faith have been 
literally the lights of the world. The teaching 
of the Catholic Church is the only system of © 
thought that has unchangingly persisted 
through the ages. The Bride of Christ is clear 
as the sun, and of the very quality of the sun. 


“Thou art all fair, my love; 


‘There is no spot in thee . . .” 


But again, it needs must be remembered that 
the Church is the army of the Lord of Hosts, 
vowed to an unrelenting warfare against the 
forces of evil and the gates of hell. Te Deums 
are often sung to jubilant rhythms, but it re- 
mains that the conception of the bright hosts 


The Kingdom of God 155 


who have contended for the faith is dim and 
blurred, and the imagination but faintly pic- 
tures the shining deeds of those who have so 
bravely and blithely followed the great Cap- 
tain of Salvation. Although St. John did not 
win the martyr’s palm, it is he above all who 
has revealed the vision of the Church Militant, 
the army of God, in the Apocalypse, that im- 
mortal epic of the holy warfare, which is to 
culminate only at Armageddon when Satan 
shall be cast into the bottomless pit and the 
peace of God finally inaugurated with a new 
earth and a new heaven. 


“Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, 
Comely as Jerusalem, 
Terrible as an army with banners. .. . 


“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, 
As a seal upon thine arm: 
For love is as strong as death; . . . 
“Many waters can not quench love, 
Neither can the floods drown it: 


“Thou that dwellest in the gardens, 
‘The companions hearken to thy voice: 
Cause me to hear it.” 


156 Values of Catholic Faith 
6. 


The Church oftentimes is called the Temple 
of God: under which figure it is conceived to 
be God’s dwelling-place, the shrine of his pres- 
ence, the sphere of his worship, the treasury of 
grace: successor to what the Temple on Mount 
Zion with its Holy of Holies meant to the peo- 
ple of old. 

This imagery flows out of the very nature 
of the Church, and in part is based on the 
usage of the Apostles. It arose doubtless from 
the saying of Jesus that if they destroyed the 
temple in three days he would raise it up again, - 
referring, as St. John carefully explains, to the 
temple of his body, the unique dwelling-place © 
of the Holy Spirit. It was by an extension of 
this idea that St. Paul, in several striking pas- 
sages, refers to all followers of Jesus as temples 
of the living God, and in one instance (2 Cor. 
vi, 12) speaks of the whole body of Chris- 
tians, the Church herself, as God’s temple. The 
Apocalypse conceives the heavenly Jerusalem 
as a temple in which the perfect worship of 
the Almighty is continuously celebrated; though 
with his curious but characteristic inconsistency 
in the use of imagery the author, in depicting 
the final heaven, asserts that he saw no temple 


The Kingdom of God 157 


therein, for that the Lord God Almighty and 
the Lamb are the temple thereof. It might be 
gathered from this expression that he con- 
ceived ultimate reality and its symbolical repre- 
sentation to be one; but this is a metaphysical 
notion which scarcely need be pressed. 

But in all this imagery, whether it be the per- 
son of Jesus that is considered, or the individ- 
ual follower united with him, or the whole 
company of believers who constitute his body 
the Church, or whether it be the perfected and 
ideal Church to be revealed in its fullness only 
at the last day, the point made is that the word 
temple indicates the dwelling-place of the Holy 
Spirit. The Church is the sphere wherein and 
through which the divine Spirit acts; and 
though the figure is not employed at the time 
by Jesus, all those marvelous last discourses 
preserved in the Gospel according to St. John 
elucidate this idea. 

Indeed, the idea is the clue to the meaning 
of history: the ageless effort of the Spirit of 
God to win the free spirits of men to truth and 
righteousness; from the days of man’s first dis- 
obedience and dim sense of guilt to the full 
revelation of the Father’s love in the person of 
the Son. It is God’s great adventure to win a 
people for himself, from the day when he called 


158 Values of Catholic Faith 


the old patriarch Abraham from Ur of the 
Chaldees until now when he calls by gifts of 
beauty, joy, loving-kindness, by the light that 
shineth in the face of Jesus Christ. ‘Chis idea 
affords the clue to a right understanding of all 
the experience of pilgrimage in the Way—the 
clash in the soul between self-will and self- 
sacrifice; between desire for freedom and the 
acceptance of responsibility. All the expc rience 
of love and faith, of joy and fear, of grief and 
disappointment, of rebellion and submis: .on, of 
temptation, repentance, prayer, sacrament, wor- 
ship, service, is threaded through in all its 
warp and woof with the influences of the in- 
dwelling Spirit; and to the intent that men may | 
know in the Church the manifold wisdom of 
God; and that it may be given unto them by 
him according to the riches of his glory, to be 
strengthened with might by his Spirit, that 
Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith, and 
being rooted and grounded in love, their souls 
may comprehend with all saints what is the 
breadth, and height, and depth, and width, and 
know the love of Christ that passeth knowl- 
edge, and be filled with the fullness of God. 


The Kingdom of God 159 
4 

From the imagery used to describe the King- 
dom of God or the Church by the Saviour and 
his Apostles, which has already been subjected 
to some examination, it logically follows that 
the Church should be conceived as the Teacher 
of ‘Truth; that as Jesus spake with authority, 
so she speaks with authority, represents him in 
this capacity as in others, and is the sufficient, 
indefectible, and infallible guide in all matters 
pertaining to faith and morals. * 

To the modern mind, inevitably influenced 
by prevailing unbelief and confused by the con- 
flicting claims of different Christian organiza- 
tions, this seems a tremendous assertion. It is 
indeed a tremendous assertion; and yet a 
patient examination of the New ‘Testament 
must convince that theological formulae are 
careful and considered in comparison with 
Apostolic phraseology. But it should be obvious 





®° The sufficiency of the Church is stated or implied in prac- 
tically every reference in the New Testament. It is not germane 
at the moment to consider the Petrine texts in detail, but merely to 
observe that Mt. xvi, 16-17, and its parallels plainly assert her 
indefectibility. Infallibility is obviously assumed in such passages 
as Mt. xviii, 17; xxviii, 19-20; Lk. x, 16, and throughout the 
farewell discourses of the Fourth Gospel promising the gift of the 
Spirit to lead the Apostles into all truth. Cf. also Ep. i, 22; iil, 
10; V, 243 253; 27-28; Col. i, 18; 24; v, 16, etc.; and particularly 
i Ti. v, 15, where St. Paul provides a formula—‘‘. . . the Church 
of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” 


160 Values of Catholic Faith 


that to question either the indefectibility or the 
infallibility of the Church in the sphere over 
which she claims jurisdiction, is to invalidate 
her status as a divinely-appointed and divinely- 
inspired teacher of truth. If the Church in her 
corporate teaching can be proved mistaken in 
any particular in the domain of faith or morals, 
it logically follows that she may be mistaken in 
other points. The confusion characteristic of 
Christendom outside the Catholic pale, the con- 
fusion of those within the pale who have 
adopted Protestant notions, is sufficient evi- 
dence of the inevitable consequence of rejecting 
the Church’s absolute authority. 

It may be the fact that the Catholic Church - 
has not defined this absolute authority by a 
formula,* but she implies it and asserts it in 
all her doctrine, practice, tradition, and legis- 
lation; nor was this authority seriously ques- 





®The Vatican Council in 1870 did indeed partially formulate 
such a definition in its doctrine of Papal infallibility. It is not the 
purpose of this essay to discuss the differences between the Roman 
and Anglican communions; but it is important to recognize, both 
for Roman and Anglo Catholics, that the authority of the Church 
was universally recognized for hundreds of years before Papal 
Infallibility was regarded as de fide even in the Roman communion, 
The fact of the authority of the Church, even for Roman Catholics, 
is independent of the question of the Pope as an infallible organ of 
that authority. Whether he be or not, does not affect the central 
question. The doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope is admittedly 
incomplete. When it has been actually completed by a subsequent 
Papal council it will be time for Anglicans to reckon with it. 


The Kingdom of God 161 


tioned until the sixteenth century. It is as much 
a part of Catholic teaching as the doctrine of 
the Atonement, which likewise has never been 
formulated. 

The fact that the doctrine of the Authority 
of the Church has not been formulated, has led 
to much confusion even on the part of those 
who profess allegiance to the historic Church. 
The attempt of the individual to make such a 
formula must necessarily be futile. But there 
are certain considerations to which attention 
may be directed, which at least safeguard 
against prevalent errors. 

Authority is too often confused with dis- 
cipline. ‘he Church has always spoken with 
authority; but here her discipline is lax, while 
there it is strict; at this period it may seem in- 
effective, whereas once it was adequate. It is to 
be noted that the desire for uniformity (not a 
note of the Church, however desirable) tends 
to strict discipline, while laxity of discipline 1s 
confessedly for the sake of permitting the 
widest possible freedom of interpretation and 
practice. Both attitudes have their advantages 
and disadvantages. It is likely that Romans 
are keenly aware of the one, and Anglicans of 
the other. But whatever method be wisest, the 
question of authority is really not touched at 


162 Values of Catholic Faith 


all. The authority of a parent may be scrupu- 
lously obeyed or outrageously flaunted, but in 
either case parental authority is not augmented 
or decreased. 

It is also obviously possible to accept the 
authority of the Church without having a for- 
mula to define it; indeed none claims that be- 
fore 1870 such a formula had been eftected. It 
is also practically possible to accept the author- 
ity of particular churches without disloyalty to 
the Catholic Church; just as the several authori- 
ties of nation, state, community, and family in 
the main can command loyal obedience though 
it is impossible strictly to delimit them. It 
would seem to be sufficient that the Catholic . 
recognize the Church as the teacher of truth 
in virtue of her endowment with the divine 
Spirit, and to hold that in any essential mat- 
ter of faith or morals she has not erred and 
can not err; and that she will never fail in her 
witness to the revelation made in Jesus Christ. 

There are many ways in which the Church 
exercises her authority. The direct teaching of 
the Saviour and his Apostles has been pre- 
served in a record that the Church regards as 
inspired and authentic. She has summarized 
this teaching in brief formulae known as the 
Creeds. She has, in various liturgies and ser- 


The Kingdom of God 163 


vice books, systematized for worship and for 
instruction all essential details of faith and 
practice. She has accumulated a great body of 
unwritten tradition and regards it as essentially 
a part of her teaching as the unwritten conven- 
tions are integral factors of British or Ameri- 
can constitutional law. She has promulgated in 
many councils an enormous body of canon law, 
and that which has received oecumenical ap- 
proval she holds to possess most binding force. 
Moreover, there is the consensus of teaching 
in the writings of her great doctors and the- 
ologians, and the continuous witness through 
the centuries of the great Apostolic sees. All 
this constitutes a great body of teaching, with 
a penumbra of what may be doubtful or un- 
essential gathered about a core of unmistak- 
able truth. Any person of sincerity and good 
will can derive all that the Church teaches 
about the nature of God, the Trinity, the In- 
carnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, 
the Atonement of Jesus upon the cross, the 
gift of the Holy Spirit, the existence of the one 
holy catholic apostolic Church and the nature 
and constitution of that organization; he can 
know her doctrine concerning the necessity of 
the Sacraments she dispenses; the effect of 
Baptism, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, 


164 Values of Catholic Faith 


and the Sacrifice of the Mass; the obligation of 
worship, and its essential nature. There is as 
little difficulty in ascertaining the teaching of 
the Church about the moral and spiritual life 
of a Christian; indeed, no Christian can mis- 
take the ideal that the Church puts before him, 
to wit, the example of the Saviour Christ. 

If in this conception of authority that the 
Church has always undoubtedly exercised and 
still exercises there are difficulties, there are 
far fewer difficulties than appear in the func- 
tioning of any and every other kind of author- 
ity. As the note of unity is obscured by schism 
and that of holiness by sin, so the authority 
of the Church is sometimes blurred by rebellion — 
and indiscipline; but she has emerged with re- 
newed youth from darker periods than the pres- 
ent, and she has asserted her authority with 
fresh conviction time and time again, when she 
has seemed even about to expire in company 
with the civilization which has corrupted so 
many of her children. 

So many and so various are the ways in 
which the Church exercises her authority ‘ that 


7It is difficult to perceive that, even if possessed of a particular 
organ of infallibility in the Pope, the Roman Church teaches in any 
other ways than those enumerated. It would be difficult to think 
of any doctrine, save the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, that is received by any Christian solely on the 
authority of the Pope. 


The Kingdom of God 105 


even in a communion where a lax discipline 
tolerates practically disloyal teaching on the 
part of accredited ministers, it is not difficult 
to estimate the degree of that disloyalty. The 
Church speaks indeed with so living a voice 
that she can be heard above the shrill notes 
of those of her children who contradict her. 
But it is equally the fact that the Church can 
not teach those who will not come to her for 
instruction; and that fortunately she is no 
longer in a position, had she the desire, to at- 
tempt to impose her doctrine and practice by 
any other method than persuasion and appeal 
to its intrinsic value. 

If in addition to the authority of the Church 
exercised in so many ways, it is recalled that 
the pilgrim in the Way has the advantage of 
the light of conscience, and of conscience puri- 
fied by grace, there is still less excuse why he 
should be ignorant of anything essential which 
the Church would teach him to believe, to do, 
or to say. And to this pragmatic test there is 
the Lord’s promise that it shall be effective. 


8. 


Jesus most frequently alluded to his per- 
sonal followers in the Way as his disciples. He 
was the master, they the pupils; he the teacher, 


166 Values of Catholic Faith 


they the learners. It is a term that has been ex- 
tended to Christians since, but not as generally 
as is desirable. 

It is noteworthy that the word discipline is 
derived from the same root as the word dis- 
ciple. But discipline has come popularly to mean 
not merely the process of learning but rather 
training under and by a coercive authority. This 
popular interpretation of the word is a strik- 
ing illustration of the fate of the idea of dis- 
cipleship in Christian thought. Almost from the 
beginning there has been a dispute whether 
discipleship to Christ and the discipline of 
Christ is an affair of voluntary submission or 
of coercive authority exercised by whatever 
means can be commanded. 

Without doubt the evangelical record de- 
picts discipleship wholly as voluntary submis- 
sion following upon the Master’s call. ‘There is 
no instance of Jesus seeking to win a disciple 
save by the inherent persuasiveness of the call 
and of the instruction subsequent upon it. Nor, 
indeed, is there an instance of his attempting to 
restrain an unwilling disciple from abandoning 
the Way, except by persuasion or the mere 
statement of the inevitable, logical consequen- 
ces of faithlessness. ‘The teaching itself exempli- 
fied in the faithful life of the disciple was to 


The Kingdom of God 167 


be the adequate test of its truth, indeed of its 
divine origin. And the disciple who failed to 
make the test became effectively one who was 
against the Master. 

It is unnecessary to contrast in detail the 
method of discipline exercised by the Lord with 
that practised by his Church at different pe- 
riods of her history. The age-long battle for 
religious tolerance, still not entirely won, has 
even to this day wholly failed to convince that, 
though religious truth is worth dying for, coer- 
cion always and necessarily fails to win faith- 
_ ful adherents. Jesus assigned the highest values 
to religion, but by example and precept elimi- 
nated force as a justifiable method of bring- 
ing men under its influence. ‘The fate that coer- 
cive discipline has encountered in the Church, 
and in the world when the Church has at- 
tempted to regulate secular affairs, suggests 
that the methods of the Gospel might prove 
more advantageous. 

Jesus’ discipline was based on the principle 
of strictness toward self and tolerance for 
others. At the hands of his followers this princi- 
ple has often been reversed. It is true that the 
discipline of Christ is not a method that a di- 
vided Christendom will readily apprehend or 
easily recover, but that is a circumstance that 


168 Values of Catholic Faith 


but lays the heavier responsibility upon the 
disciple. | 

It was in the aspiration after personal per- 
fection which the Master inculcated, that the 
religious life, in the technical sense of that term, 
had its root, and the vows that characterize 
that state, their origin. As valuable propaganda 
for the Kingdom of God, monasticism needs 
no defense to the Catholic Churchman. Its 
failures, arising from laxity in following its 
ideals or from intolerance in furthering its own 
purposes, have not been permitted by histor- 
lans to remain inconspicuous; but nevertheless, 
they have been outweighed by the particular 
call and the special grace that, within its favour- 
ing atmosphere, have enabled so many pilgrims 
in the Way to attain unto sainthood. So ob- 
vious a means to holiness, congenial only to 
Catholic soil, must ever remain a fruit of 
Catholic faith, a witness to Catholic ideals, and 
an indication of a discipleship and a discipline 
that often fulfil the evangelical counsels of per- 
fection. 


9. 


There was occasion, in the discussion of the _ 
values of the Creeds, to note that the definite - 
predictions of Jesus as to a catastrophic con- 


The Kingdom of God 169 


summation of the present order were receiv- 
ing unexpected support from recent scientific 
hypotheses. The eschatological prophecies, 
both of the Lord himself and of the Apostolic 
writers, though they have been incorporated 
into and maintained by the official teaching of 
the Church, have undergone strange distor- 
tions at the hands of Christians. Even within 
the Church, though these prophecies have sel- 
dom been denied, they have often been ex- 
plained away, glossed over, or frankly neg- 
— lected. Outside the Church, criticism, which for 
long has learned little from tradition, in the 
case of the Liberal Protestant theologians has 
eliminated the eschatological prophecies from 
the authentic teaching of Jesus by deliberately 
excising them from the text of the Gospels; 
while in the case of a more recent school, prac- 
tically everything else in the Master’s teaching 
except eschatology has been put aside or 
treated as a mere “interim ethic,’” in what it is 
dificult not to regard as an attempt to prove 
Jesus to have been a mistaken fanatic. The mo- 
tive of the Liberal critics, mostly influenced by 
an Hegelian philosophy of evolution as applied 
to history, was to eliminate the supernatural 
from what they conceived to be otherwise the 
wise doctrine of an inspired prophet. The so- 


170 Values of Catholic Faith 


called eschatologists, on the other hand, empha- 
sized the prophecies about the end of the world 
in the crudest possible manner, with the motive, 
it seems, not to preserve the wisdom of Jesus, 
but to deny it. Even in the field of criticism both 
movements have been abortive. 

The indifference to Jesus’s prophecies about 
the end of the world on the part of those Chris- 
tians who neither disbelieved the doctrine about 
Christ nor distrusted his moral teaching, has 
been due largely to their sharing the wide- 
spread delusion of progress characteristic of 
the latter half of the nineteenth century. The 
notion of progress developed under the in- 
fluence of the Hegelian philosophy as applied 
to an analysis of history, to which the industrial 
revolution followed by the rapid advance of 
material civilization and the post-Darwinian 
theories of evolution appeared for a long time 
to give a specious confirmation. The coalescence 
of these three movements gave the notion so 
great a popularity that the impossibility of 
reconciling it with the teaching of Jesus ceased 
to be a matter of interest, much less of concern, 
‘even to Christians. 

Hegelianism no longer holds undisputed 
sway over the realm of speculative philosophy; 
material advance was rudely interrupted by the 


The Kingdom of God 171 


world war; and the materialistic reconstruction 
now in process is attended by obvious and dis- 
concerting evils; the modern doctrines of the 
degradation of matter and the dissipation of 
energy play an increasing role in physical and 
chemical experiment and speculation. Under 
these circumstances the quondam dream of the 
whole creation tranquilly moving onward and 
upward no longer creates unmitigated confi- 
dence. It is at least not improbable that both 
science and philosophy will yet contemplate ul- 
timate universal catastrophe and destruction, a 
circumstance that should relieve the eschato- 
logical prophecies of Jesus of the burden of in- 
credibility which in the opinion of the world 
they have long borne. 

Jesus represented life as perpetual conflict 
between contending forces of good and evil, 
and he contemplated as possibilities, so far as 
individuals were concerned, victory and defeat. 
He predicted indeed the ultimate triumph of 
good; not, however, as the result of a steady 
progress and evolution of society into the 
Kingdom of God, but rather as a certain fear- 
ful coming of judgment, his own return as uni- 
versal judge, the destruction of the present or- 
der of time and space, and the creation of a 
new heaven and a new earth. 


172 Values of Catholic Faith 


When subjected to analysis, the history of 
mankind affords less material for the theory of 
progress than is usually assumed to be the case; 
and this is true whether goodness, beauty, or 
truth, or all three, are taken to be mankind’s 
destined end. It is not possible, despite the 
many volumes that have been written on the 
theme, to subject prehistoric man to analysis, 
much less the hypothetical creature that certain 
schools of evolutionists imagine marked the 
transition between the anthropoid ape and 
prehistoric man; nor indeed does the compara- 
tive handful of bones that is the sole and not 
indubitable evidence for his existence, offer ma- 
terial for a convincing synthesis. Alike the con-_ 
siderable knowledge of a very brief portion of 
the life of mankind and unsatisfactory glimpses 
of vast periods of that life of which almost 
nothing is known, suggest a continuous state 
of ebb and flow, of progress and degeneration, 
mere perpetual change. Assuming that Jesus 
possessed prophetic insight into the future, the 
fact that he conceived the fate of the race to 
be a doom is not really incredible or improb- 
able; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
reconcile any theory of Christianity with his 
obvious teaching than that it is a way of escape 
from that doom. 


The Kingdom of God 173 


Certainly the pilgrim who believes he has 
found such a way of escape has no intellectual 
difficulty in accepting the eschatology of Christ. 

He regards it as far from incredible, on the 
contrary peculiarly congruous, that, if Jesus 
came from heaven and has returned there, he 
will come again; and that whereas he first came 
as Saviour, he will, when his redemptive work 
is finished, return the second time as judge. 
And though the pilgrim is concerned not to 
deny that Jesus wrapped about his mysterious 
teaching of the end of all things a vivid orien- 
tal imagery agreeable to his day and to the 
minds of those who heard the words as they 
fell from his lips, he is concerned to deny that, 
however oriental, the imagery does not but veil 
a truth. Moreover, the imagery of Jesus’s es- 
chatological discourses seems not less vivid, 
not less fantastic, than the materialistic de- 
scriptions of the last man expiring in a frozen 
world or the last race of men pulverized to 
dust in the conflagration of colliding stars, 
which have been drawn by the lively pens of 
modern scientists. Nor, as the pilgrim struggles 
to understand the most recent theories of rela- 
tivity (which the more he understands the more 
they seem to be true), and as hardly he per- 
ceives that these theories reduce time and space 


174. Values of Catholic Faith 


to mere forms under which he is required to 
think, the less unlikely does it seem to him, 
who has so many other reasons for believing 
Jesus Christ, that Jesus, or St. Paul after him, 
was mistaken in contemplating the non-existence 
of time and space when God should be all in 
all. 

In a sense, Jesus’s moral teaching is an “‘in- 
terim ethic,” but the interim during which it 
is designed to obtain is not only longer than 
the first disciples imagined it would be, but 
longer even than modern critics conceive; it is, 
indeed, the interim of time—before the world 
was and after it shall have ceased to be. 

The pilgrim, whether he considers the es- 
chatological teaching of Jesus philosophically, 
scientifically, ethically, or as a Christian (that 
is to say, from all three points of view) is con- 
tent to repeat the ancient creeds, feeling no 
compulsion to minimize their statements or to 
dissolve them into intellectual mist, J believe 
. . . he shall come again, with glory, to judge 
both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom 
shall have no end. 


10. 


The Kingdom of God, being an infinite con- 
cept, is an inexhaustible theme. The endeavour 


The Kingdom of God sy Be 


here has been but to note, by means of sugges- 
tion and illustration, certain of its definite 
values. These values, possibly not the most im- 
portant, have been arbitrarily selected for per- 
sonal reasons. [he illustrations, however, were 
chosen with consideration of the several aspects 
from which the Kingdom may be viewed; that 
is to say, from the similes used by the Lord in 
presenting the conception to his disciples, from 
the best known metaphors employed by the 
Apostles, endeavouring in their turn to expound 
the doctrine; and from certain experiences and 
ideas associated with or suggested by the King- 
dom. Before turning to the consideration of 
certain conflicting aspects of Catholic faith, it 
must suffice to express the hope that a method 
has been indicated whereby those who meditate 
upon this rich theme of the Saviour’s teaching 
may enrich their conception and deepen their 
faith in its infinite value. 

It is a happy augury of the renewal of Chris- 
tian interest in the question that the Pope has 
lately proclaimed a new festival of The King- 
dom of God for the Roman kalendar. It is a 
festival that all Christendom would do well 
to adopt and observe. 


VI 
THE WAY 


1. 


THE PURPOSE of this essay has been to esti- 
mate certain values of Catholic faith as they 
have been personally apprehended. Since there 
has been no pretense of systematic apologetic 
or exhaustive treatment, these values have 
been arbitrarily selected. The Mass, the Creeds, 
the Divine Office, the Kingdom of God, were 
considered under several illustrative aspects 
with the hope of setting forth Catholic religion 
persuasively. Though no precise definition of 
Catholicism has been attempted, perhaps the 
purpose announced in the preliminary state- 
ment, the illustration and enlargement of the 
conception thereof, has been accomplished. 

It has been obvious that it is impossible to 
discuss Catholicism without reference to the 
Papal, Anglican, Orthodox forms with which 


The Way 177 


it is practically everywhere associated. Differ- 
ences, however, amongst these groups have 
been, so far as possible, ignored; certainly have 
in no instance been treated controversially. 
Nevertheless, due to the unfortunate divisions 
of Christendom, what must challenge the 
Catholic engaged in estimating for himself the 
values of his religion is the claims and aspects 
of the faith as confessed by these now sharply 
divided groups. Whatever be the special ap- 
peal of Orthodoxy or whatever future effect 
may be derived from the growing sympathy 
and understanding between Eastern Christian- 
ity and Anglo-Catholicism, at the present Or- 
thodoxy is not for more than a few in the west- 
ern world an alternative either for Romanism 
or for Anglicanism. But in the West, particu- 
larly for English-speaking Christians, Rome 
and Canterbury are frequently in conflict and 
always in contrast. 

There has been a sincere attempt in these 
pages to subordinate the Anglican bias that 
inevitably has been evident; though to regard 
the Anglican as a Catholic communion is, on 
the Roman hypothesis, to exhibit such a bias. 
In conclusion, still with the intention of ignor- 
ing controversy, an effort must be made to esti- 
mate what seem to be the particular values of 


178 Values of Catholic Faith 


these two forms of Catholic Christianity. If 
the emphasis proves to be laid upon the advan- 
tages of both of them, it should not be inferred 
that there is ignorance of or indifference to 
their difficulties or defects. For with St. Paul 
it is impossible to suppose that the Church will 
be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, 
holy and without blemish, until, at the consum- 
mation of all things, Christ presents the Church 
to himself as altogether glorious, the fulfill- 
ment of the Kingdom. 


me 


Though offering the strongest contrasts, in 
many respects the Roman and Anglican com- 
munions are complementary to each other; a 
circumstance that encourages the hope of an 
ultimate synthesis between them; that implies 
the duty of sympathetic understanding and 
common prayer on the part of each. 

Perhaps the chief value that attaches to be- 
ing a member of the Roman Catholic Church 
is the sense of being in the main stream of 
Christian tradition, the sense of continuity of 
the Church of today with the Church of the 
ages. It is necessary to go a long way back, 
much farther than the average man ever goes, 
to find a period of history when Catholic Chris- 


The Way 179 


tendom did not center about the Papacy; when 
the Pope did not, to intent and purpose, mean 
to the Catholic (save perhaps of the Byzan- 
tine East) much what he means to the Roman 
Catholic now. It is easy to disregard what 
critics call the rise of the Papacy; or if it be 
forced upon attention, to explain and dismiss 
it by an appeal to that development which all 
Christian doctrines have undergone. Nor, in- 
deed, does the allegation that Papal Infalli- 
bility was not defined until 1870 disturb the 
Papist, for he may justly assert that this defini- 
tion but clarified the Papal claim and did not 
augment it. 

In contrast to this sense of continuity the 
Anglican is conscious of a sharp sense of dis- 
continuity, if not with regard to essentials. (and 
this he does not feel), certainly with regard to 
practically everything that is incidental and 
occasional. He feels compensated for this dis- 
location in the history of his communion by the 
consciousness of having recovered for his faith 
and practice a scriptural quality, a scriptural 
basis, which Romanism obviously lacks. The 
Anglican whose religion is grounded upon the 
Book of Common Prayer is saturated with the 
phraseology of the Scriptures; and he is gen- 
erally content with such doctrine as may be 


180 Values of Catholic Faith 


proved thereby; and he will usually feel that 
this reclamation of the Bible makes up for 
what has been lost of continuous tradition as 
exemplified by Rome. 

In the perfected Church it is difficult to 
imagine that either value will be emphasized at 
the expense of the other. The gradual recovery 
of a partially lost tradition is a healthy ten- 
dency amongst Anglicans, as with the Romans 
is an increasing interest in biblical studies. 

Again, throughout the Roman communion 
there is a practical uniformity of teaching with 
regard to essentials that imposes an inescap- 
able impression that what is so generally taught 
and accepted must be precisely the teaching of © 
the Church, uncolored by individual opinion. 
This practical uniformity is the result of dis- 
cipline, which since the Council of Trent has 
been marvelously effective. The Church speaks 
with an authority which is everywhere recog- 
nized; and the assurance that this begets in her 
members, despite that it is sometimes arro- 
gantly expressed, has a tremendous value. The 
believing Roman Catholic is less concerned with 
justifying his faith than any other kind of 
Christian. He conceives himself a soldier in an 
army that moves to a predestined goal in mili- 
tary obedience to the strategy of the high com- 


The Way 181 


mand, and the orders of the high command 
are regarded as practically equivalent to the 
voice of God. 

In contrast with this essentially uniform 
teaching the Anglican must accommodate him- 
self to schools of thought in his communion, 
in consequence of which there is not only great 
diversity of teaching with respect to non-essen- 
tials, but actually contradictory teaching about 
cardinal doctrines of the faith, accompanied 
by a corresponding diversity of practice. The 
Anglo Catholic must admit the existence in his 
communion of a considerable amount of definite 
Protestant opinion. He finds his compensation 
for this variety in the freedom and toleration 
of which it is an indubitable witness; and he 
derives his comfort from the reflection that if 
this freedom seems to belie the notion of 
authority in his Church, it is only because dis- 
cipline is lax and practice does not correspond 
with theory. He is further encouraged when he 
realizes that during the past century there has 
been throughout the Anglican Churches an in- 
creasing appreciation of their Catholic heri- 
tage, accompanied by a revival of all that con- 
notes Catholic faith and practice. This is one 
of the most significant and impressive phe- 
nomena of Christendom. As the Anglican looks 


182 Values of Catholic Fatth 


upon the Roman Catholic Church, he seems 
to observe authority imposed at the expense of 
freedom; in consequence of which he makes the 
best of a freedom which, though it has often 
degenerated into license, more and more will- 
ingly appears to submit itself to the corrective 
influence of traditional authority. 

There is a third conspicuous value of Roman 
Catholicism. Not only in its teaching about 
essentials, but in connection with all that pe- 
numbra of doctrine and practice that centers 
about and emerges from that teaching, there 
is developed and in turn there is ministered, a 
supernaturalism which the Christian religion 
definitely implies. ‘This supernaturalism, in spite. 
of the superstition into which admittedly it 
easily degenerates, generates a marvelous sense 
of reality in all that pertains to the worship 
and the practice of the Church. Moreover, 
though now and again it seems almost too 
graciously to accommodate itself to human 
weakness, it has proved the most effective 
school for saints. 

In contrast to this supernaturalism, this feel- 
ing of ease and familiarity with regard to re- 
ligious concepts and practice, the Anglican 
Church engenders and exhibits in its members 
a certain restraint with regard to the super- 


The Way 183 


natural; a restraint at its worst difficult to dis- 
tinguish from coldness and indifference, but at 
its best a deeply tender and reverent attitude 
toward the divine and a profound sense of the 
holiness that God requires in those who ap- 
proach him. 

Ignoring on the one hand the Roman claim 
of the necessity of being in communion with the 
Pope, and on the other the admitted existence 
of Protestant elements in the Anglican com- 
munion, these two forms of Christianity ap- 
proach each other in essential doctrine, and 
both genuinely hold the Catholic faith as the 
necessary interpretation of Christian religion. 
Yet between them there is all along the line a 
marked contrast as to doctrine and practice, 
as well as with regard to polity; and the result 
has been to develop different types of Chris- 
tians. Admitting the validity of the Catholic 
hypothesis, is it too much to afirm that both 
systems have developed values of Catholic 
faith which are, if they can be shorn of their 
defects and abuses, definitely complementary? 
Certainly it is difficult to conceive of a reunited 
Christendom in which those values will not be 
fully appropriated and synthesized. 

It is impossible now to devise formulae 
which would serve as the basis of a reunion 


184 Values of Catholic Faith 


between Rome and Canterbury. But in both 
communions, among the more. enlightened, 
there is surely growing an appreciation of the 
necessity of such a reunion if the Catholic 
Church is to fulfill her divine mission. Here 
and there and everywhere, though they be but 
as straws floating upon a stream, there are signs 
of a mutually developing interest in one an- 
other. It must be obvious that only in an at- 
mosphere of sympathy, of good will, of prayer, 
can these have practical effect. As sympathy 
deepens with clearer understanding, as good 
will becomes diffused with the overthrow of 
prejudice and ignorance, and as prayer, uniting 
itself with that of the great High Priest, be- 
comes importunate, doubtless the way will be 
revealed. 

And no Catholic should doubt that in that 
revelation will be seen in a new light and under 
a new glory, the path that leads the pilgrim 
wayfarer to Christ in God. 


PRINTED IN U. S. A. BY MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO., MILWAUKEE, WIS. 


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